The Hinge of Destiny
by kayura sanada
Summary: When the end of the war leads to nothing but further destruction and everything is lost, Duo tries to fix it the only way he can. But even that fails, and Duo is left in another dimension entirely, lost and alone. But Duo's never been one to just roll over. Even in this other dimension, he finds there's still something he can do.
1. Options

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing isn't mine. Duh.

Warning: I don't actually know dick-all about science. Creative liberties have most certainly been taken.

"_Choices are the hinges of destiny."_ - Pythagoras

For Mischievous Kitsune.

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><p>Summary: In a world where everything has gone horribly wrong, Duo busies himself with a last-ditch effort to escape – and perhaps prevent. But Duo's last-ditch effort pulls him to a different dimension, and he finds that everything he knew no longer exists.<p>

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><p>The Hinge of Destiny<p>

Chapter One

Options

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><p>Everything started just a few months before Operation Meteor, but no one paid attention to it then. War destroyed so much on its own that all other destruction was blamed on it, as well. And then the war ended, and there was so much waste that a new pile didn't make anyone blink. And of course Maremaia's little siege distracted everyone enough.<p>

And by then, after things settled enough for people to notice, it was too late.

At first, the extra weapons in the abandoned Alliance buildings were shipped out to be sent into the sun, and no one thought for a second about the uranium or plutonium in them. No one considered what might have happened to the soil, the air, around these abandoned, unchecked sites. And then, after all that had already had its way, no one thought what might happen if a few surviving White Fang members decided to explore some of these buildings without first testing to make sure the old safety measures had been turned off.

By the time Quatre first started coughing, it was too late.

Duo shivered slightly in the cold; the heating had needed to be shut down the day before in order to ensure there was enough energy for the jump. He leaned heavily on the metal table before him and closed his eyes. He was insane to even think this. Heero would have laughed at him. Well. Smirked. Quatre would have laughed, and that would have made Trowa join in.

Duo's heart hammered in his chest. No. He couldn't think about any of that. How much time did he have? Not much. Maybe none. Maybe White Fang had already found him, and they were closing in on his pathetic little base, and he would end up dead like the rest.

He closed his hands into fists. No. If he could just get this ridiculous machine of the doctors to work, then he might have a chance to set things right. And if not... if not, then at least he wouldn't be alone.

He looked behind him, toward the door. The bar holding it latched remained untouched as the world outside rattled. Duo held his breath, a ridiculous instinct as the underground station trembled. The ceiling, already bent alarmingly in the middle, groaned a bit.

The room shook again, and a couple papers slid off the desk. Whatever. He didn't have time to care about them; they were old news, anyway. If he hadn't managed to get this to work, then it wasn't going to. And because he needed it to, it damn well better.

He turned to the only other furniture in the room – he'd gotten rid of the bed when he'd run out of screws and springs. The thing was a monstrosity; he hadn't been able to go out and get good, solid, reliable materials, since White Fang had decimated the entire damn planet and had all the shuttles off-world locked tight. As if the colonies were even inhabitable now, the radiation from the uranium oxide drowning each one in deadzone soup.

But of course, of the few who found themselves surviving the radiation, Duo had to be one of them. White Fang members had to account for several, as well. Because why not.

Another rumble, and they were definitely getting closer. Dust drained down from the ceiling. He rushed to the shower-stall-come-transporter and turned the thing on for the first time. The dashboard within lit up, and he let out a relieved sigh. He didn't have the time to mess with the wiring again. He turned back to the desk, to the old laptop – Heero's old laptop. Duo's lungs burned, looking at the thing. Maybe he should have gone out with Heero that day, but it wouldn't have made a difference. Only Heero wouldn't have died alone, and Duo would be standing in an underground maintenance shaft about to do something as stupid as try one of the doctor's old blueprints like he was the freakin' Doctor and the shower stall the TARDIS.

"Okay. Okay." This time when the world shook, it wasn't from above. Duo grimaced. "Fuckin' bastards won't leave me alone for five minutes. Five years should be enough, right?" He bit his lip. Five years in the past. That would work, right? He could stop all this from happening. "Right." He pressed it in and turned back to the shower stall – gods, he needed to stop calling it that, or else he'd never be able to make himself do what he was about to do.

"Not like this isn't nuts to begin with," he muttered. His voice echoed in the room, as it always did. It was answered by no one. He shivered. "Oh, well. If I'm crazy, then there's no one left to care, anyway."

The words nearly propelled him forward on their own. He went to the shower – the TARDIS (and he managed to laugh a bit at his own joke) and booted up the system. The lone light in the corner flickered, then finally died. Another thump rained more dust – and what looked like far too much plaster – on top of the machine. The thump came from outside the room, and he cursed. _Must_ White Fang use every single last missile and rocket in their now-overstocked arsenal? He was just one fuckin' man. They couldn't possibly consider him a threat anymore.

Of course, if he got this stupid, ridiculous machine to work, then he could very quickly become a threat – before they ever had the chance to become one themselves.

But at the moment, getting the damn thing to work was mission number one.

"Right, Heero?" he said, and hated how hollow his voice sounded in the empty room. The TARDIS only amplified the echo. He took a deep breath. The dashboard was little more than an old video recording monitor and a keyboard. Wires slid from it all to the computer chips plastered to the walls of the shower stall, then twined around the metal bars that tried to stabilize the shower stall's frame out to the wall, then to Heero's laptop. If things went well – and even now, he wasn't holding his breath – the entire contraption would portalize to the new time – old time? – with him. And in order to prove to the doctors that he wasn't mad, he would need the laptop and the videos he'd recorded on it.

He shifted from foot to foot as the rumbling got worse. He heard an audible crack from up above. The stupid shower stall / TARDIS shook. He ended up having to pull his hands away from the keyboard for a moment as the thing shook. If he typed the wrong coordinates in, the backspace button wouldn't be able to fix the mistake. Once the earth calmed down, however, he heard a banging on the door. He cursed. "Come on, come on..."

The tiny monitor was too small to read everything he typed, and he just had to hope that he didn't mess up as his fingers blurred over the keys. The crashes against the door got louder, then changed to a creaking boom. Duo slammed his hands on either side of the keys, nearly falling out of the damn thing. He pulled the damn stall door – reinforced now with metal from a spaceship, the metal still brownish with old blood – closed.

It seemed to be what the stupid machine had been waiting for, because suddenly the lights changed to a blueish color and a humming started. The wires off the monitor sparked. He couldn't see what was happening outside the TARDIS, didn't know how Heero's laptop was taking the strain. He imagined it busting, burning, melting, crackling apart, his last tether to Heero gone, and nearly tore the damn door open again. But the metal beneath his feet was trembling, and it was too late.

He heard the maintenance door wrench apart. The screech of twisted metal tore through the rising sound of... TARDIS. Duo winced at the noise, then covered his ears as the sounds of the TARDIS... _pulsed_. It was like he could hear the actual soundwaves, like he was listening to space, the high-pitched whining of the Earth circling around its axis. He hissed as his very skin reverberated with it.

Another screeching sound, and a wave of force blasted against the TARDIS. Duo rocked on his feet, finally losing his balance and banging his shoulder against the stall. Something cracked. He didn't know if it was the TARDIS or something much less tangible. Then he stumbled and smacked his head against the side of the stall, and he wondered if maybe the cracking sound was his body breaking apart. He couldn't tell. It was too loud to feel pain.

Something banged on the outside of the TARDIS. It was definitely probably not a normal time-jumping bang. Something screeched. He thought he heard something on the door. Then the world tilted upside down. The thing clawing at the door stopped.

The silence then was so sudden and oppressing he thought he eardrums might burst. As if in a vacuum, the stall seemed to float. Like it was drifting, unweighted. There was absolutely no sound at all. When he breathed, the noise was like a shotgun blast. He held his breath.

It only took another moment, but then sound returned, ripping like the shearing of metal, the echoes of it thrumming through the air like heartbeats, until the TARDIS shook in its own earthquake and finally stilled once more.

Duo's head split, and he crumpled to the floor of the stall.

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><p>A few months after Maremaia and Dekim Barton surrendered, Quatre started coughing. He wasn't the first, but he was the first in Duo's circle. It soon became apparent that it wasn't just a cold or a bad reaction to the renovations that began nearly before the end of the war, as Quatre had claimed. Lied. And every day that passed by that Quatre got worse, and worse, Duo saw Trowa backing away, leaving, turning more and more into the stolid man he'd been before Quatre had melted him. Then Quatre had died. Two months later, Trowa had died, too, in a suicide run against the growing White Fang force. Duo had watched both of their deaths.<p>

It had been the dying White Fang members who'd made the trip into the irradiated weapons bases on Earth and in the colonies. Their efforts made the radiation worse, exposed the air to more unsecured uranium oxide. And then those dying bastards had gotten their hands on missiles that hadn't fallen into disrepair, and they'd staged war on everything. On the Gundams, for stopping them the first time. On Earth, for existing when it was the colonies that should rule (and damn Milliardo for letting that idea gain any sort of foundation; once validated by him, there was no stopping it). Wufei and Heero and Duo had all set out to stop them. For a while, it had been like the war, minus Duo's best friend, and they'd managed to route much of the campaign. They saved refugees from Libra's attack when White Fang sent a missile there, calling the bombing the anniversary or justice. They'd saved a few more when they destroyed an entire bombing center, and they'd even kept the radiation from the huge blast contained.

But it wasn't enough. Even with Sally Po's help – Sally Po, who had gone on an iron lung before the hospital she'd stayed in was bombed, Wufei loyally by her side at the time – they'd been rerouted. It soon became about keeping themselves alive – something Heero couldn't stand for.

Two weeks after Wufei's death, merely ten months after Maremaia's uprising, Heero went out on his own suicide run, barely giving Duo time to do more than splutter, "you've got to be kidding!" before he took to a shuttle alone and headed for outer space. Duo, disbelieving and unaware of Heero's follow-through, only learned of Heero's death through a recorded video White Fang proudly showed two days later, complete with a taping of Heero's body as it froze in the vacuum of space.

And that was how Duo came to be alone, hunkered in an old bunker of Quatre's deep in the desert, desperate enough to read one of the doctors' old blueprints and come up with his own suicide run.

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><p>Duo decided to call the time lapse a few minutes, because saying he may or may not have lost consciousness was not nearly manly enough. So after a few minutes, when his head felt less like it was trying to rearrange itself in the confines of his skull, he stood – and he didn't wobble or have to grab the sides of the stall to hold himself up, no, sir, he did not – and checked the tiny monitor. There was plenty of text. He was certain it would be useful if only he could read it.<p>

Well. Then the only way to find out what the hell had happened was to get the stall door open. Not so hard. The thing was kind've pathetic, anyway.

And then he noticed that some of the metal had kind've welded itself together. And by kind've he meant completely. Great.

Trying to get the leverage to open a door welded shut was difficult in and of itself. Trying to open a door that had been welded shut was a whole 'nother problem. The door might have budged. An inch. Possibly. Duo decided to be optimistic on it and finally collapsed back. He heard the ground rumbling, a different kind of rumble than the psychotic acid trip that had happened after he'd instigated the TARDIS. It took him a good five minutes to realize the shaking was due to a train passing by. His heart leaped to his throat. The trains were running. He'd managed it. Or, well, he'd managed something.

Oh, then like _hell_ he was staying in here.

He tried again, pushing like hell against the door – maybe another inch – and then trying to shimmy his weight back and forth to get the thing to tip. It might have jiggled a tiny bit. Okay. He looked around his little TARDIS – he could really use that space-time dimension thing that made the inside of the real TARDIS bigger – and thought. Wires. Best not to pull them out. One loose wire in his mini-TARDIS and his trip could be cut a little short.

He rubbed his chest absently and turned in one complete circle. There was a little less metal on the ceiling, and though it nearly brought him physical pain – he rubbed his chest again and wondered just how many bruises the trip had been happy enough to give him – to destroy the TARDIS he'd spent over three months building, he twisted himself upside down into a handstand and kicked up. The ceiling gave slightly to his kick with a loud groan, and four kicks later, his foot broke straight through the top. His attempt to switch his position had him momentarily on his back flailing like a dying turtle, but finally he was up and reaching on his tip-toes for the opening. Another rumble passed outside his rather well-made prison (nothing like a good self-pat on the back), and he wondered how long he'd been at this ridiculous attempt at escape. Who knew traveling through time could be so hazardous? Ha ha.

After some pushing and pressing and a little more odd maneuvering, and the top of the TARDIS was open wide enough for him to shimmy himself through. The edges of the stall scratched along his back and chest and thighs as he crawled out, and he thought he heard something tear. Wonderful. He hadn't had time to pack extra clothing, so it was now the hobo look for him. He couldn't wait.

It was as he finally landed outside the TARDIS that he stopped cold. It was definitely the same maintenance room as before. The electricity worked – there was more light than the dingy bub Duo had kept going on the dying generator. But instead of the usual switchboards, there were buttons. Duo went up to them. They were locked in plastic cases, but please, locks were always a joke to the great Duo Maxwell. They lit up the entire room in blues and, in two spots, red. Duo cocked his head as he considered it. Obviously they were supposed to work like the switchboard; The things were lined up in neat little rows, and each little group sat under headings of LW-5 and LW-6, blah blah, straight across. He wrinkled his nose and forfeited his give a damn to check and see what lie beyond the tiny room.

The subway station was no longer a dead tomb of darkness. There was light. All up and down the thing, illuminating the tracks and the walls and... Duo's heart pounded. It was so normal. So bright.

He hurriedly stepped out. He had no idea what time it was, where Howard or Doctor G was... the laptop.

He ran back inside, horrified he'd nearly forgotten it, and stilled. The laptop, the last surviving piece of Heero, of his time, of his life, was cracked straight down the middle. He closed his eyes. Okay. It wasn't the end. He grabbed the hard drive, though it was split like the rest of the machine. He rubbed his chest and looked out of the room again. No trains that he could hear. He had to just keep looking forward. So Heero was officially gone. He'd been gone for months.

He hurried away from the room, hugging the edges of the station. The texture of the walls was the same as from whence he came, and the knowledge was oddly jarring. Everything was the same, but it was different. Seeing everything as it had once been, after so many months of destruction and debris and death... when he finally came upon a subway platform and hauled himself up – and there were the looks, the silent shifting of bodies that said 'stay away from the hobo' better than any words – he had to stop and stare for a few moments. People. Well, obviously people, it was a subway platform, so there were probably always people. But _people_. People looking down at their phones, reading magazines, conversing within small groups. Their clothes were new, not ratty or torn – though why were women wearing belts over their shoulders and men around their wrists and thighs? And why did their phones make strange blipping noises whenever they passed close by one another? – but they were obviously unafraid of any potential danger. They weren't trying to crawl into hidey-holes much too small for them in order to escape the thunderous quaking that should have been happening, but wasn't.

The world down here was calm, still, even as the floor rumbled, signaling another train, and suddenly there was a pattern to everyone's movements as they hurried to the yellow line. Duo let the movement shake him from his stupor, and he moved toward the exit. As he went, he marveled over the clean air, the lack of dust or grit, the lack of sickness on people's faces as they slowly died of cancer or tumors or just plain malnutrition. He thought he could smell fresh bread, and when he exited the subway, nearly bumping into a racing man as he nearly vaulted down the stairs, he saw a bakery just in front of the subway station, luring in hungry commuters.

And then he saw the rest, and he paled.

The cars on the road were sleek, slim, a style he'd never seen before. Several of them had people talking on phones or eating or _reading_, for crying out loud, and he realized many of them were automated. He was fairly positive the technology had been there, during the war, but the money had been appropriated to war funds. The money had been used to start reconstruction before... well, before reconstruction had no longer been an option.

But when he looked around, he saw other peculiarities. A stop signs' letters blinked on as a car came near. The crosswalk signal chimed, and people who were reading and texting simply started walking across the street, most not even bothering to look up. Then there was something slightly off about the clothes they wore; women wore shirts with high necklines. Men wore pants that nearly revealed the ridges in the bulges of their pants. Duo looked up and shivered. The subway he'd chosen was now surrounded by skyscrapers, where before there had been nothing but rubble. Few buildings had been over three stories tall, and the top stories had been uninhabitable, crushed beneath the weight of broken beams and crumbled plaster. Every skyscraper looked like a death trap, both for those within and those nearby. He decided to search for some sort of transport and crossed the street.

He felt like a tourist, taking in all the familiar and unfamiliar things around him. It was odd enough, having actual buildings and people, everyone perfectly fine with walking around, no one hunkering down and glancing furtively left and right. No one running to him and begging him to help them, save them, as gunfire rapport nearly drowned out their voices.

Everything was normal, and while it made his heart pound in anticipation of an attack, it also felt... liberating. Calming. It was difficult to let the idea of it seep into his skin, but as it did, it felt nearly soothing, at the same time he thought he might throw up. He hadn't known what it was he would do when he ended up in the past, but he hadn't thought he would stay still. He was so used to running and fighting, he had just thought he would be doing that as soon as he stepped out of the TARDIS.

Or, really, if he were honest with himself, he would admit that he hadn't thought much of anything at all. He'd only thought how badly he needed to move, to _do_ something, to try to save some places that might not have been salvageable before. He hadn't really thought he could save the world, but he had thought that, just maybe, he might be able to save that which was most important to him.

It was the knowledge that the other pilots could very well be alive that made him hurry his pace.

Of course, he couldn't help but notice that most cars stopped at red lights without anyone touching anything. All cars turned on their blinkers when they turned, and the blinking sounded slightly different for left or right. Store signs obviously written by hand still blinked, and he even saw one man say, "broad sign, erase," and he stared with wide eyes as the sales and specials just disappeared. He might have stared a bit too long, because the guy asked him what he wanted to order. He waved the question away and kept walking, wondering if they even accepted normal cash on this alien planet.

There was a thought, he considered. Had he ended up on some different planet where everyone just looked human? He thought again of Doctor Who, then chuckled at himself. Had he lost his damn mind? He must have hit his head on the ride through time. Or maybe he'd been found by White Fang, and this was all a very elaborate delusion before he went six feet under.

Somehow, despite everything, the idea of having failed made him angry. He needed to find G, or maybe Howard. He needed to find out what the hell was going on.

He stopped. Turned. Stared. That stupid weather sign by the gas station. That couldn't be right. Granted, it certainly felt like a balmy sixty-seven degrees, but there was no way in hell that could be right.

AC 204.

He almost puked.

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><p>If the sign was wrong, it wasn't the only one. And every single newspaper had a seriously bad editor. And also every magazine. And packaging slips. And envelopes. And calendars.<p>

Duo stopped looking around after he finished seeing the nearest post office's little decorations. Every box people brought in was time stamped July 17, AC 204. The calendars by each service lady said the same. Even the stamps. Oh, and when did people start putting their fingerprints on the card scanner? Because that was what they were doing – fingerprint, ding, payment accepted. No cash, no cards.

But at the same time, there was no sign of White Fang. He'd searched those newspapers for news of them, from them, orders, maybe, or demands. Maybe just news on the leaders Duo vaguely remembered. Nothing. Nothing anywhere. No mention of White Fang. Had they been defeated? Had Duo's time jump been for nothing? Had it all been unnecessary?

But it didn't matter, because the one thing he'd planned on, the one thing he'd wanted to do, couldn't be done. The other pilots were still dead. Trowa. Wufei. Quatre. Heero. He hadn't managed to save any of them.

Almost, he thought to return to his TARDIS. But why bother? The thing would need to be recreated, and he obviously hadn't managed to do something right. What if he tried to go backward again and ended up fifty years in the future? Seventy years in the past? His chest burned, ached, nearly tore. He rubbed it hard. Even if he could get the thing working again – and, well, parts would no longer be a problem, since the world was apparently once again in working order – and...

And he stopped there, too, his brain finally pushing through the empty about of 'wtf' that it had slogged through for the past couple of hours.

There was no way that all of this could possibly be rebuilt in just five to six years.

Even if the battle with White Fang – well, the resistance against White Fang's overwhelming supremacy – suddenly ended the moment Duo disappeared, this many skyscrapers couldn't possibly be rebuilt. No way, no how. Even if every single person corralled themselves on this particular city, there still wasn't a way in hell. And the technology – that wouldn't be possible, either. Ll the money for such things would have been spent on the reconstruction – which would still be going on. And while Duo had traversed the city up and down, nearly wandering in a daze, he hadn't seen a single sign of any major construction anywhere. There had been a section of road closed off for rebuilding, and that was it. _It_.

Maybe he really was on the brink of death, and this illusion was extremely long and extremely boring. Or maybe he was dreaming? He pinched himself, though he had no idea why that was supposed to work; he felt the sensation of pain in his dreams, after all. He looked at a sign, then away, then back again, because he'd heard that in dreams, if you look away from something, that something will turn into something else. But the sign remained the same – fast food joint, fish burgers on sale. Which didn't sound appetizing in the slightest, despite his constant raw desire for food. He'd run low on rations a few weeks before he'd finally finished the TARDIS.

So it was real, and none of it made any sense.

Howard, he told himself firmly. G. If they were even alive. Which, he supposed, G wouldn't be. Which left Howard and the Sweepers. Or at least what was left of the Sweepers after Howard had been killed.

He covered his face with his hands. No, there was no point in going to the Sweepers, even if any of them were left (and what were the chances? Duo hadn't heard a word from them for months before even the time jump). What did he have to go on? Nothing. He was in the middle of an impossibility. A future impossibility.

He took a deep breath. Okay. What was he supposed to do when in enemy territory, or when about to embark on a difficult mission?

Stake out the area. Learn the enemy's movements. Observe.

So. He would do exactly that.

* * *

><p>Five days later, and he thought he might have actually lost his mind.<p>

Yes, it was, for all intents and purposes, AC 204. The war, however, had only been won a few years ago. Maremaia's uprising never occurred; it seemed the young teenager hadn't been so easily swayed by Dekim Barton, and he had been thrown in jail for attempting to incite war. The Gundam pilots had come through and stopped the war, but no one hardly knew who they were. Relena Peacecraft had suffered burns on the right side of her face and neck from trying to stop her brother on-board the Libra. Her opponents called her Two-Face. Her constituents called her martyr.

Duo wondered where Heero had been.

But a simple internet search showed him that the Sweepers still existed, and Howard's face greeted him on their site – they had a site! – so it was almost certain that the old goon still lived.

So Duo had shipped himself off to L3, where the Sweepers had apparently made their main base of operations (not on Earth?). The shipping yard was huge, way bigger than Duo would have expected for Howard and his crew. It was like one of Quatre's Winner outposts was made entirely for them; and while Duo blinked stupidly at it all as his little shuttle approached, he saw two ships hauling in and another one departing. Was there more members of the Sweepers than there'd been before? Had Howard and his crew merged with other shipping companies?

The dinky little shuttle was stopped at the landing gate, and a freakin' _code_ was demanded of him. He sighed, rolled his eyes. "The god of death is the most fearsome, miraculous beast in the universe, and we shall prostrate ourselves before his infinite glory."

There was dead silence from the other side of the comm link, but then uproarious laughter broke through the ship. Duo laughed, too, and the sound was so foreign it sent shivers up his spine. Shivers that _hurt_. It had been a long, long time since he'd last laughed. "Maxwell! Why the hell aren't you in Death's Hand?"

Duo could only assume that was the name of some ship of some sort. "Long story," he said, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. He rubbed at the ache there and worried through his list of ways to bring up... whatever the hell needed to be brought up. His psychosis? His nervous breakdown? His TARDIS? His... dimension traveling?

He pretended the last one wasn't the only one that explained the unexplainable without making him out to be a madman.

Who was he kidding? He was definitely a madman, no matter what.

"Oh, God," the person on the other side of the comm said, and Duo jumped. He recognized the voice. Greg, a guy about ten years Duo's senior. No, in this time, he'd be fifteen or sixteen years older, about. And the man had died in the first months of White Fang's assault.

His heart doubled its pace, and this time it wasn't in apprehension, but with hope. If Greg was alive, if Howard really was alive, then the other pilots could still be here. And if White Fang wasn't a problem, then he wouldn't have to fight. He wouldn't have to anything! He could just... relax. Enjoy peace like he'd been hoping to since Maremaia had been defeated. Hook up with Heero again, even though they'd done nothing more than hang out and get Heero a personality and... talk about things going further.

Oh. He rubbed his chest harder, scarcely daring to believe it. Had he traveled to a dimension where things didn't suck nearly as much?

Please let it be so.

"Oh, God, what?" Duo heard, and sucked in a sharp breath. Howard.

"Duo's in a civilian shuttle. Says it's a long story."

"Maxwell, if you broke that damn ship again, I will kill you!"

Duo laughed again. It nearly turned into something else, and he had to stop before the waterworks started. "Howard! Man, it's good to hear your voice."

"Don't try to butter me up, Maxwell! Just how totaled are we talking?"

Duo closed his eyes, even as his shuttle was given the green light, letting the voices wash over him. Greg was laughing again. It was like he'd been given a second chance. His world – there was nothing left. Even if he'd gone back in time, there was that time-divergence issue; he might have created another dimension in his going back in time, and he might have done altered nothing in his time. Or there was the idea of not altering the thing, or altering things so drastically they lost the war, or Zechs destroyed the planet, or...

Though it was painful, and heartbreaking, and made his insides twist until he thought he would puke, maybe it was for the best that he'd never arrived in another time in his world, because no matter what, it would have been nothing more than an attempt to follow after Heero, or to try to make things right in the memory of him, and maybe... maybe that wasn't necessary here.

Maybe there was still a chance for them to take it to the next level.

The thought made him jumpy, and he suddenly felt like the shuttle was taking too long, even though it was sliding securely home into the docking pit. Duo hardly had to touch the controls; the strange technology that had somehow infected the entire solar system had also infected his ship, and the thing aligned itself as if it was difficult or something. He snarled at it. It felt good. Light. Like... like he wasn't having to run anymore.

Like his friends were _alive_.

But then he realized they were all talking to him as if they knew him, and the idea clogged his mind for a little bit as it dawned on him that they were expecting another Duo – another Duo _lived here_. Somewhere. And had a ship? Or borrowed one from Howard? Or something? Which meant there was another him. He felt his brain sort've twist around and start nibbling on itself right around there. It produced a rather pounding headache.

The docking pit was huge; a few ships were docked to his right, and he started to maneuver the damn ship before something overrode everything and started leading his damn shuttle forward, as if he couldn't see that the first few ports were already filled with another ship. He sighed loudly.

"That's what you get for totaling your damn ship again." Howard outright groused. It made Duo grin, even though it was somewhat confusing. He and Howard had only really gotten to start knowing each other near the end of the war, and his time with the Sweepers afterward had gotten them a bit closer. But he'd only been with the man for a few months before he'd gone with Heero, and they'd never gotten to the point where sighs could be readily interpreted.

Still, Duo smiled. Because there was something who could understand him. He felt like he'd been given a second chance. Maybe his curse couldn't reach all the way out here. Maybe he could be safe to live a happy life here. Maybe. Hopefully.

It felt a little bit like running away, and he hurt for the world he'd left. But the place was nothing but ashes for him now. Someday, some group of rebels would rise up from those ashes and take out White Fang. Wasn't that how it always was? But it wouldn't be in Duo's time, and it wouldn't be Duo's group of rebels. Those were here. Duo rubbed his chest. He wouldn't go back, even if he could. There was nothing left for him there.

Suddenly, just as Duo's shuttle hooked into port, alarms went off. Duo jumped, his hands already slipping down to pull off his harness. Something trickled over the comm, a short static burst, and Duo suddenly feared White Fang had somehow infiltrated the Sweeper base. "Howard? Howard!" Nothing. His heart in his throat, he tore himself from his seat and raced to get a vacuum suit. The idea of losing him again...

Then the static turned into a hiss, and Duo trailed the vacuum suit behind him as he raced back to the comm panel. "Howard? I swear to Death himself, if you don't answer this godforsaken thing–"

"Who the hell are you?" Howard snapped, his voice suddenly sharp. Duo nearly reeled back. "You're not Maxwell."

Oh. Well. That meant the alarms were for him, then, didn't it? Somehow that brought nothing but relief. "I am Duo. But not your Duo. I was gonna explain this once I was on-board." He let the vacuum suit go and scratched the back of his head. The vacuum suit floated idly behind him. The alarms still blared. "I swear, old man, I'm me. It's all a little confusing."

"Shut your trap," Howard said, and the words were so not like the Howard he knew he actually did. For once. "My men are going to secure you and your vehicle. If you so much as twitch, they are under orders to shoot. I didn't tell them where to aim."

Duo blinked. "Wait – I thought this time period was peaceful?"

"The shutting up started a minute ago."

Duo snorted, nearly making a quip about him never knowing shutting up. But he decided to go with it; if he got too bad a danger feeling, he would take down Howard's men and force their talk at another time.

Duo heard them, even though they were trying to be quiet. It almost made him laugh; the Sweepers were anything but quiet, ever, and there was no way that was different here. He turned to them as they entered the shuttle, unsurprised to find Stefano, the adrenaline junkie, leading the way. He gave a jaunty little wave. Stefano had been one of the ones to die with Howard near the beginning of White Fang's insurrection. Here, it was like none of that happened.

It was almost comical how every last one of the Sweepers met his gaze and stopped stark still in the middle of the entrance. Duo threw out a snarky grin and waggled his fingers again. "Hiya, guys."

Stefano actually shook his head and blinked his eyes. Duo had to bite his damn tongue to keep from laughing. "...Duo?" he asked.

Yoshua, a skinny, tall man who had actually survived the first few months of the attack in Duo's dimension, snorted. "No way, idiot. He's too short."

Stefano squinted. Duo scowled. Make fun of him for his shortness, huh? He beamed Heero's glare at the man and actually watched him shuffle on his feet and raise his gun again. Huh. Maybe Duo had gotten better at it. "The braid?"

"Fake, idiot!"

Duo snorted. He couldn't take it anymore. "You guys sure were smarter in my dimension."

A couple in the back, two Duo didn't recognize, actually exchanged looks. Stefano was the one to lift his chin – and his gun – and snarl at Duo. "Just get moving."

Get moving, huh? So there was most likely another ship coming. Why else would they be in such a hurry to get Duo out of the docking pit? None of the men were in vacuum suits, after all. So Duo rolled his eyes and obliged, fairly positive none of them were going to shoot him. His headache, at least, dimmed at the adrenaline in his system. Nothing like guns in his face to get him reacting quicker.

The walk from the shuttle through the pit to the strip was interesting. While Stefano had apparently decided to believe Duo was nothing more than an illusion, the others kept sneaking glances at him like he was going to molt into some alien beast. It was amusing. It was entertaining. It beat the hell out of hunkering down in an abandoned subway tunnel putting together bits and twine for a sci-fi blueprint that only had a ten percent margin for victory.

Well, not to say that his plans had gone off successfully, per se, but hey, they were good enough.

The strip was much more chaotic than Duo had been prepared for. He'd thought there would be some sort of Sweeper armed guard to meet him, the place cleared out of any civvies, or maybe a wall of Sweepers prepared in case he made a run for it. But as soon as he stepped out of the pit, he understood how all of that would have been impossible. When he'd seen what had looked like a number of ships entering and leaving port, he'd apparently missed that the pit was still chock-full of ships and cargo and people. One look around the strip showed him there were more people that could ever be cleared out in just a few minutes. Right down the long aisle of merely this one landing dock had about three different ships loading up cargo, and another couple refueling for takeoff. Even with the guns and the frowny faces, Stefano and his men had to slow down their little procession as people simply continued on their merry way, completely unperturbed by the myriad of Sweeper guards escorting Duo. Hell, one person turned, looked, and outright grinned. "Pissed off Howard again?"

Duo grinned and shrugged, even as Stefano and his entourage growled. "What can I say? It's a skill."

The man snorted and shook his head. He readjusted the box in his hands before walking away. Sedately.

Duo nearly laughed.

Stefano upped the pace then, which was a joke, since he nearly had to stop stone-cold still four times before they made it through the strip to the outer bay. At least there the place _had_ been cleared, and no one was nearby save Jonah and yet another Sweeper Duo didn't recognize. But the point of clearing the place out was lost when they'd just gone through so many civilians to get there, and the reactions of those civilians made Duo snarky enough to waggle his fingers and say, "hey there, Jonah." The man's eyes had widened progressively from the moment Duo had stepped through the bay doors, and they nearly popped out of his head then. This time Duo _did_ laugh. "This is great, you guys, thanks so much for the celebrity treatment."

"Shut your mouth," Stefano said, and Duo rolled his eyes.

"Stefano, you and I both know damn well I could rip that gun from your hands and blow your brains out before your friends had a chance to do more than blink. We both also know that the only reason I'm not doing that is because I don't want to. Keep messing with me. See what happens."

Despite how much the man had decided to believe Duo was a fake, he still paled at the words. Because instinctively, Duo guessed, the man knew Duo was right.

The bay was large, and boring-white, everything white, with no paintings on any of the hulls. Totally, completely impartial. Military precise. It made Duo's back straighten, made the adrenaline starting to simmer down rev right back up again. Maybe he'd been wrong to think this time was peaceful? Howard certainly didn't seem to have calmed down any. Or maybe it was PTSD? If the man had ever suffered from any such thing.

Their footsteps nearly echoed in the damn place, and Duo made a little game out of trying to make a beat between his footsteps and the Sweepers', until Yoseph found out what he was doing and started deliberately messing up the rhythm. It felt _so good_ to have someone glare at him like that again. Like coming home.

He rubbed his chest. His headache was coming back.

He caught sight of several Sweepers as they made their way around the bay, many of them with backs turned to him as they dealt with someone trying to go the way Duo and his entourage were headed. There were more than a few cure words bandied about before Duo was escorted into the inner bay.

Here was where everything was lit up, and he relaxed once more. Colors finally painted themselves over the wall, and they were in the usual Sweeper mess of splashes of paint on each wall, one bright red, the other grass green, another so light a blue it was almost white, and a painfully large amount of horrible pictures, like kid's drawings on a refrigerator, decorating every square inch of the walls and even parts of the ceiling and floor. One of the guys had obviously been adding something before the alarms sounded and the 'breach' went up, and the paints sat idly beside a picture that may or may not have been intended to be a sort of dog, or maybe a goat, and the Sweeper beside it was blinking rapidly at the picture Duo himself made as he walked past. He pointed to the wall. "Goat?"

The man mutely shook his head.

Duo tilted his head. "Dog?"

Another mute shake of his head, and Stefano snarled some more. Duo was ready to pat his head like a dog and say, 'down, boy.' "I'm lost, dude; what the hell is it?"

The man opened his mouth. Closed it. "Horse."

Duo laughed good-naturedly. "The hell it is!"

Yoshua hurried him along then, and Duo didn't even care that the man was glaring steel bands down on him, because just then he saw Howard. And it didn't matter to him in the slightest how angry Howard was, or how his hands sat on his hips like he was some battalion commander about to order a man's execution, because Howard was alive and it was _so good_ to see his face. Duo grinned like the Cheshire cat. "Howard!"

The man did not look pleased to see him.

Duo noticed the man stood in a niche – he couldn't say small, even though it was small compared to the rest of the base – that housed the communication hub. Greg sat slightly behind Howard and to his left, speaking to someone through the comm link in hushed tones. And then there was someone else, a gun in her hand, glaring at him like he was slime on her shoe. The glare only faltered for a moment before she held out her gun, an obvious warning to stay where he was. As if he had any inclination at the moment to muscle his way through a sudden blockade that was Stefano and Yoshua and their team.

Howard looked him up and down. "Wow, you really worked at this, didn't you, boy?"

He wasn't one hundred percent certain what 'this' was, but since they obviously thought he wasn't actually himself, he figured 'this' had to do with the braid and the looks, which gee, they bore an uncanny resemblance to Duo, didn't they? Go figure.

Duo held up his fingers. "Did you guys take my fingerprints? I mean, I know you did where I come from, because you thought I was just some thief – G did, I mean – and you had it on file." Howard frowned, and Duo wiggled his fingers. He seemed to be doing that a lot. "Take my prints."

Howard's frown deepened. "As if I'm stupid enough to come that close to you."

Duo rolled his eyes and grabbed Yoshua's gun from his grip. Stefano nearly shot him, and he ducked down and kicked the thing from his hand. Two others wavered, not knowing if they should shoot or not, and Duo ignored them for the last two, who looked at him with wide eyes and raised their guns on him on instinct. He knocked one out with a karate chop, carefully using the man as a meat shield from the woman beside Howard, who looked about ready to shoot him down. Then he held out Yoshua's gun. "There. Now you have my fingerprints, right?" He tossed the thing out of arm's reach. "Now I'm going to let this gentleman go, and you're not going to shoot me." He let his gaze go a little Shinigami for a second, enough to make the men waffling on what to do drop their guns to their sides and not. The woman looked ready to spit. "Put your gun down, lady."

Her eyes flashed fire, and in that instant, Duo jumped. Because, even though the clothing was different, the height different – she'd grown a couple more inches – the hair a bit longer, and the attitude completely off, more like Noin or Sally Po than the woman he knew, it was her; he knew it. That fire was the exact same. Still, he squinted and turned his head as if he was inspecting an alien creature. "Hilde?"

She snapped her gun straight back up, as if she hadn't lowered it at all. "You don't get to call me that, you fake," she snarled, and the fail insult was the clincher. It _was_ her. She seemed to catch the look in his eyes and narrowed her own. He seriously thought she just might shoot him.

Just what the hell had happened to her in this dimension?

Well, whatever it was, at least she was alive, too. Even with her distrust – hell, downright hatred – he couldn't help the giddiness fighting the pain in his chest. She was _alive_. Anything else could be worked through.

But while his antics had earned Hilde's ire, Howard had begun studying Duo from head to toe, eyes narrowing, lips thinning, hair flapping in some nonexistent breeze – no, really, there must have been a fan or something on the consoles behind him, because his hair was moving, for some reason.

And Howard finally gestured toward the gun. "Someone bring that here."

Yoshua was the one to do it, smart enough to avoid handling the part Duo had touched, and kept well out of Duo's reach before sliding back to hand the weapon over to Howard. The man turned to someone else, finally showing Duo his back – well, his shoulders. That weird goatee-beard quivered as the man murmured to the person standing beside Greg. Whatever he said made Hilde tense.

Someone took the gun away. Duo nearly rubbed his hands together with glee. Then, of course, came the question of whether fingerprints were the same for the same person in two dimensions. Maybe they were different? How could he know? It's not like people were ever able to test the idea one way or the other. Hm.

Howard lifted his head. "Tell me something only I would know."

"You snip your goatee beard every day," Duo said automatically. A couple of men around him actually chuckled. These men were not the ones Duo had easily disarmed. The chuckles might also have been a little nervous.

"Something the rest of my men don't know, Duo."

It was the first time the man had called him Duo, and he wasn't the only one to notice. Hilde gave the codger a scandalized look. Duo outright grinned. "Old man! I knew you weren't that stupid. Okay." He thought for a minute, even as Howard seemed to lean back and forth between annoyed and amused. Like he didn't know which was more appropriate to the situation. "Let's see. I don't know for sure what we talked about together here, sorry. Normally I would bring up us talking about the moon, how it looks from the colonies, you know? Because it was the first time you and I really had a serious conversation, at least, where I'm from." But Howard didn't seem to know quite what Duo was talking about, and he hurried on, kind've hurt that he was still the only person with that memory. "You absolutely, one hundred percent despise Tallgeese. You think it was a work of art for its time, possibly immortal in having been the first Gundam prototype. But you think the thing is clunky and top-heavy and needs serious re-writing. You even rewrote it twice – where I'm from – simply because the thing gave you headaches. Screw what Zechs ordered. The thing was a beast. Oh, and you thought the Wing Zero was spun from gold. And the Libra was another clunker; the thing was pathetic, lumbering–"

"How do you know about Tallgeese?"

The question wasn't one Duo would have ever expected, and he looked at Howard like the man was a loon. "Um, because it was on the battlefield? A lot?"

Howard frowned. "You're what? Eighteen? Twenty? You haven't even seen the battlefield, son."

Son? Duo nearly crowed. Howard had only called him that a couple of times, in private, but it was a word Howard only used for his men. For the Sweepers. "What are you – oh, right, the battle started late here. We fought in 195 where I'm from."

Someone snorted. Another person cocked his gun again. Duo glanced at the man out of the corner of his eyes, ready to take him down the moment he got too rambunctious.

"And... where you come from," Howard said, mimicking Duo's words down to their very intonation (which sounded hilarious coming from him), "Tallgeese was... used?"

"Uh, yeah? By Zechs. The final form was used by Treize."

Howard made a strangled sound.

Duo blinked. "I guess that's not what happened here?" Maybe he should have done a little more research. Cracked into a couple of databases, looked into some military reports. But he'd just wanted to _move_, to find something he could relate to. A port in the storm. Or perhaps just some sort of proof that he hadn't failed completely; that he was no longer horridly, horridly alone.

He rubbed his chest and looked around. He still had his meat shield, not because he was holding the man down, but because the man didn't seem able to make himself move. Yoshua was beside Howard, apparently turned defensive from his loss of his weapon. Stefano had picked his own gun back up, but he didn't aim it t Duo anymore. The man seemed lost, like a big, brawny puppy. Stefano probably knew Duo well enough to recognize his skill, which meant Stefano had fallen sharply on the 'it _is_ Duo' side of the fence.

The others, those Duo didn't recognize, seemed confused more by Howard's lack of fear than by Duo's abilities. That would work out for him if they tried to fight him off. He would be able to take care of them in no time at all. Stefano would be easy, as well. Duo couldn't believe it, but the biggest threat in the room was Hilde. And that twisted his brain into Rubik's Cube knots.

"You know I hate Tallgeese how?" Howard asked.

"You ranted about the thing. Then you ranted about the people piloting it. Said the thing should have been scrapped years ago."

Howard's face contorted oddly. "It was."

Huh. Oh. Hm. Well. That explained why no one had seen the thing in this dimension. He guessed. Maybe.

"By who?" Duo asked, and it seemed their light conversation had gone on quite long enough.

Hilde plastered herself in front of Howard, her gun pointed straight at Duo's heart – well, there was something that hadn't changed, at least; the woman was still emotional (unless she couldn't aim for the head here, which would make her less of a crack shot than her now-dead counterpart). He didn't know whether to smile in relief over finally finding something familiar in her, or frown at the memory of the Hilde he'd known.

It was a relief, being here with these people. It was. But at the same time, he couldn't help but notice differences – the _least_ of which being these people's ages. He'd still lost those precious to him. But there was something here. There had to be; he had to believe it.

"You're not Duo," she declared, and he found that something similar there, for an instant, in the quick assertion she spat at him. The woman was nothing if not strong in her convictions. "Who are you?"

"I am Duo," he said. "Just not the Duo you know." He sent Howard a look, beaming it past Hilde's left shoulder. "You know the most about what the doctors worked on, don't you? All that fancy shit they threw to the wayside. Right where they kept the blueprints for Wing Zero, they left blueprints for something a little, um..." He waved his hand in the air. "Well, the blueprint for the Zero system was weird enough, I guess, so what the hell? A time machine."

The man's eyes narrowed. "And you come from the past."

The man's tone was dubious, and Duo couldn't help but snort. "Yeah, 'cause that makes sense with what I've been saying." Howard didn't seem surprised by what Duo said. Not at all. In fact, the old man actually seemed to be considering it. And apparently, that managed to hit all up and down Hilde's nerves.

"You're trying to tell me – tell _us_," she said, glaring shortly at Howard, "that you're... what? Traveling with the Doctor?"

Duo grinned brilliantly. Well, that was certainly something that hadn't changed. She was still a fan of Doctor Who. It had been through her that he'd been (forcefully) introduced to the show. The very, very long show. He blamed her for the name of the TARDIS. If it weren't for her, he wouldn't have even know which references to make to make fun of himself for his harebrained scheme.

"Wouldn't that be awesome?" Duo said. "Me as the Doctor? Actually, it might not be the best idea. I'm a little more violent than him. Don't you think? I mean, the man absolutely hated guns. I look at a gun and go, 'hey! Free souvenir!' It's not very Doctor-like."

Hilde didn't seem what to do with that response.

There was some sort of commotion behind him, and he wondered if the hall was no longer cleared out. It sounded almost like someone tearing down a warpath. Hilde looked relieved. Duo acted automatically, twisting around the man still willingly staying as Duo's meat-shield and posing the guy in front of him. He was fairly positive Howard would do something about Hilde, but the new person...

Then he blinked. And blinked again. It was kind've creepy. The man standing in front of him wasn't anyone Duo would recognize, and yet the face was the exact same he saw in the mirror every day. But older. And scarred a little! There was a scar on his lower lip. Why? What had happened?

But it was definitely himself. Duo. Well, another Duo. Some Duo other than himself but still himself. And oddly enough, this Duo had an even longer braid than Duo. And he was taller! Only by a couple of inches, but they were a couple of envious inches that made Duo would to squeeze the information on how the man had managed to get them. Was Duo some sort of late bloomer growth-wise? Maybe he would get another inch or two before the year was out.

Of course, that was going on the assumption that the him staring at him wasn't going to flip ape-shit and kill him. Or maybe just kill him without going ape-shit? So long as Hilde, who was looking rather vindictive, if Duo's peripheral vision was to be trusted, didn't pull the other him into some sort of frenzy.

Wait. His heart pounded thick in his chest, and pain blossomed from every beat. There was another him. Well, of course there was another him. But there was another him! He – why was there another him here? "Why are you here?" he asked, and couldn't believe the words had the audacity to come out.

"Why wouldn't I come back to work?" Duo – the other Duo – asked, and the words clanged around in his skull. He worked for the Sweepers? Which made him a Sweeper. Which... was confusing. He had a job? Like, a normal job? Like normal people.

His mouth opened. Closed. A couple unintelligible sounds may have emerged. He shook his head. "What?"

The other Duo put his arms on his hips and tilted his head. And narrowed his eyes. He took in the looks on the faces of those in the room, the men Duo had defeated, the look on Howard's face, the scowl on Hilde's. The other Duo's eyes lingered on her for a bit longer than necessary. Duo wondered if there was some sort of silent conversation going on between them.

The other Duo came closer, looked him up and down, lifted an eyebrow. "You really tried, didn't you?"

It was _so weird_ to hear his own voice. And to look at a him that was similar – but not quite exactly like – his own. Like looking through a cracked mirror. He had more than just that little scar – he carried himself with the tiniest bit of a limp, as if he was fighting to not let it show. Well, obviously he wouldn't; why would he? It was a weakness.

It was so odd to see someone look like some big brother and know they was actually him.

Duo turned in a circle, very slowly, acting as if he was showing off his 'outfit' and instead taking the moment to take in the rest of the room. Stefano had lost all fight; his eyes were nearly round with wonder, looking from Duo to the other Duo and back again. There was less wonder and more confusion in the rest. Howard neatly sidestepped Hilde as she did that silent-communication thing with the other Duo some more. She barely bothered glaring at Duo now; apparently the other Duo was going to make everything all right again. And that was so much like the Hilde he'd known that once again, he found a tether for his hopes, and by the time he was facing himself once more, he'd steeled himself from the worst of his fears.

He grinned. "So? Whaddaya think? Pretty good, right?"

He wasn't bothering to argue with himself. Why would he? If the other Duo was half as observant as he himself was, he would have noticed the lack of surgical marks on his face and skin. The hair wasn't dyed or extended. There were no contacts in his eyes, and he'd been told several times (mostly by Quatre, and with a weird awe) that his eye color was fae-like. He had no voice implants. He had ratty clothes on, dirty, faded jeans with holes in it and a torn shirt – nowhere to hide anything that might have altering his appearance. The evidence of a fight showed that even if he did have something like that on him, it would have glitched or been jostled be the battle.

So it was unsurprising when his other self narrowed his eyes and looked at him again.

He gave the other him time. It would probably be weird, he thought, if both he and the other Duo were called Duo. And which of them would be the 'other Duo,' anyway? Probably him, and that rankled for some reason. He wasn't a freakin' alien. Well. Was he technically an alien? His head pounded, and he abandoned the thought.

Guh. His heart pounded so hard in his veins it _hurt_. And he was having the slightest trouble breathing. Only a tiny bit. Enough that he couldn't quite manage to get a deep breath. And his _head_. Make it stop.

There was a thought. Had he injured himself getting here? The pain had been on the sidelines since he'd arrived, and was only getting worse and worse. Maybe coming out to space had instigated it more? Or maybe it was some sort of side effect from _hopping dimensions_ like he had the slightest clue what he was doing.

He came back to himself when the other him – Duo One? Duo Two? Older Duo? – finally seemed to decide something. "How old are you?" he asked.

Duo laughed before he could help himself. "I dunno. How old are _you_?"

The other Duo actually shared his grin. But unlike Duo, his grin fell quickly, as if the scar made it hurt. But of course that wasn't the reason why. Duo wondered what had changed.

But when the other Duo shrugged, the gesture was as familiar as the old grin. "Around mid-twenties."

Duo nodded. "Around twenty for me."

The other Duo crossed his arms, sized Duo up. "You're scrawny. And short."

Hilde made a strange noise. Duo didn't bother to look at her. "How the fuck did you get tall?"

the other Duo just shrugged again. "Did G not feed you enough or something?"

It made Duo grin, even as his brain staggered under the weight of... of... something. Suddenly he found himself moving forward, ignoring the rest of the people in the room to look closer at the man like him. Taller, scarred, but there was something else a little different, too. Duo couldn't quite name it. But while he was looking for something different, it seemed the other Duo was looking for something, too. Only, while Duo kept a small grin on his face, the other Duo frowned openly.

Duo wanted, so very badly, to ask what had happened to him.

"Do you remember her?" the other Duo asked, suddenly serious in a way he hadn't been before. From somewhere behind and to Duo's left, Hilde made a sound that seemed almost to be a warning. Like from a mother when a child tries to leave a plate of vegetables untouched.

There was no doubt who the 'her' could be. Not to Duo. He touched his braid. "Of course I do."

"And the hair?"

"Expectations," Duo answered, because people always thought he was a girl at first glance, and then they thought he was a pansy, weak, because real men didn't have long-ass hair pulled into a braid. And then no one expected him to have lockpicks and weapons stored in said hair.

The other Duo nodded. "Where do you come from?"

"Gallifrey," he quipped, and they both shared a quick, identical grin. Duo hid a sharp wince. The other him narrowed his eyes. "Earth," he said, this time making vague gestures. Meaningless gestures, he'd been told. He rubbed his chest, waved an arm in the general direction of Earth, then in a larger sweep as if encompassing the universe. "Somewhere else. I didn't mean to. It was supposed to be a _time machine_. But the scientists never finished the thing, so I guess maybe it wasn't supposed to do anything. But it was the only thing I could think of to do. The only thing that might help."

The other him wrinkled his nose. Duo was alarmed by how correct Quatre and Trowa had been the one time they'd called the action from him "cute." He swore to break the habit. "Help what?"

So he told them. It was like talking through a firestorm, and he became more and more certain that he'd managed to screw himself over somehow, traveling in a freaking shower stall to another dimension. Maybe the mode of transportation caused ulcers, or cancer, or something, and the only reason the Doctor wasn't affected was because he was an alien. Or maybe because humans were making the whole stupid thing up.

He told them about the end of the rebellion – then had to back up and explain that Operation Meteor started in AC 195, not AC 200, just three years after Duo had been caught in G's shuttle, and the other Duo hummed a low, "so he didn't have time to fix you the regimen, huh? That explains your height," which made Duo want to punch him. Then he explained the problems, the gases being leaked from unmaintained weapons caches – "stupid," Howard remarked – and how it all fell apart when White Fang grabbed a couple of said weapons caches before Une and the Preventers, hardly formed, could secure every location.

The battles. The war. The death toll. Quatre. Trowa. Wufei. Heero. And as he mentioned each one, he saw a tensing, a confusion, in the other Duo that he couldn't understand. And finally he finished, and no one was holding their weapon on him anymore, and there was a strange, humming sort of silence while everyone blinked and tried very hard to not believe a word. Except for the other him, who seemed to believe. Because, he thought with a smile, there was no denying they were the same person. And he may run and hide...

He hitched in a couple of silent breaths and looked to the ground, wondering if he could get away with sitting – his feet were starting to hurt – and putting his head between his knees.

"And what happened to you?" the other Duo asked. The question made him look back up, focus again on the other him, the taller, more rugged him. Maybe he would look like that in a few more years. But then again, he hadn't been put on G's 'regiment.'

Which ticked him off like no one's business.

"Has White Fang given you guys any trouble?" he asked, ignoring the other Duo's question, tensing despite himself. Though the question was intended for everyone, it was the other Duo he watched. The taller him frowned more deeply, but said, "nothing. The leaders staged a final stand in the Libra, and they went down with the ship." Duo wanted to ask just what that meant, but he continued too quickly for him to ask. "The stragglers were idiots, and Oz had rounded up the Alliance's armaments before Operation M even began. Whatever remained, Treize cleaned up before White Fang or Romefeller could get their greedy little hands on them."

Treize? Duo tilted his head. "That's right. They were having their own little mini-war while we were attacking, weren't they? What came of all that on your end?"

But the other Duo waved the question away and glared at Stefano, who looked about ready to answer. He stepped closer, leaned down – completely unnecessary; the bastard had maybe two inches on him – and asked again, "and what happened to you?"

Was he that pushy? He didn't think so. He hoped not. "Nothing. Well, not over there. Maybe. I think. Which reminds me, what happened to your leg?"

The other him grimaced. See? Neither of them wanted to talk about their weaknesses in front of others. So stop pushing.

Except the other him pushed. "You think?"

"Did it start when you got here?" Howard asked, cutting into the glaring contest before it could even start. The man even walked up and stood between them. But while he just gave the taller him a warning glare, his gaze, when it turned on him, lingered for a while. "Like you're breaking apart?"

Duo hadn't thought of it that way, but when he let the words sink in, he thought they might have been perfect. His heart seemed to be trying to break through rib cage and make some sort of bid for freedom. His lungs, on the other hand, tried to be shrinking. His head seemed ready to burst and leak brain matter out his ears. And, he realized with bemusement, even though he'd hardly eaten anything, his stomach hadn't spoken one word of protest since the first time he'd nibbled on a sandwich. He'd thought it was because the thing was from a rest stop, but he should at least be getting hunger pangs or something.

"Uh," he said, realizing everyone was waiting for him to answer Howard. "Yeah, I guess."

Howard frowned. Almost outright scowled. "Duo?" Despite the fact that the man had no doubt in his eyes, he still tripped over the name. It made him smile.

"Yeah?"

The man nodded and bulled forward. "You traveled through dimensions, Duo. There are a lot of theories on that – on what could happen. You might cause an imbalance in our universe, make it start breaking apart." At Duo's wide-eyed, breathless look, Howard said, "there would be signs of it by now. Earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, fluctuations in the sun's radiation." Duo nearly collapsed in relief. "There are others, though," he said, his tone saying, _and one of them's happened_. "a merging of the two dimensions, the destruction of the old one. Irreversible futures. The destruction of the bodies found in the wrong dimension." Howard's gaze pierced him, and Duo knew the last was the one Howard believed was happening. His gut dropped to his toes. "The dimension, like a living thing, would reject the person who didn't belong, and they would die unless they returned to the dimension in which they belonged."

Duo staggered. The very idea of returning made him feel sick. He couldn't. There was nothing there. And even if he had the will, what were the chances he had the way? No.

So he was going to die.

The thought rattled around in his brain, making it ache all over, until he had to close his eyes as little spots blinked in his vision. Shit. "How long do I have?"

Howard waved him forward, and he started walking away, leading Duo somewhere. Hilde made another noise, but this time the taller him turned to her and motioned a quick 'stay' military signal, and punctuated it with a sharp glare. They actually had a battle of wills before Duo was ushered by his big-brother clone after Howard.

He glanced back as the Sweepers made way for them, all of them wide-eyed and gaping. "What's up with her? She was so much more... innocent when I knew her."

But his older brother clone actually doubled back and blinked down at him like he'd just asked who the alien in the room was. "Hilde? Innocent?"

"Uh... yes?"

Clone Brother seemed lost for words for a moment, first as if Duo had stunned him with a beam, then as if actually considering Duo's words. "You fought five years before us, didn't you?"

Even though that had already been established, Duo nodded. "Yeah. She'd just signed up for the military."

The other Duo hummed as if that explained everything. "The Hilde I knew had been in the military for several years by the time I met her."

Duo thought about that. Thought about meeting Hilde in the recruitment office, no naivete, no blind trust. "Was she suspicious of you at first?" At the other him's nod, grudging respect on the press of his lips and the squint at the corner of his eyes, Duo followed the line of reasoning to its conclusion. Hilde wouldn't have been a suck mobile suit pilot. She would have been able to hit the broad side of a barn. "Did you protect her?"

Big brother Duo gave him a 'you're kidding, right?' look, and Duo had to work through that piece to get to the 'got captured anyway' bit. Probably because, when Hilde came into her own, she actually became a pretty good shot. So Hilde had brought him in?

"Of course she did," other him said when he asked. "You think those other idiots would have gotten me otherwise?"

Point.

"Then how the hell did you get to the lunar base?" he asked.

"She'd become disillusioned," other Duo said as Howard turned them out of the room and into a short, fat hallway that ended abruptly at a door. Howard pulled out a set of keys. "We talked. She asked why I was fighting for the colonies when they'd thrown in their lot with Oz. I asked her if the colonists were smiling yet." A small smile flickered over his face. Duo remembered, vaguely, his own conversation with her. He thought he might have said something similar to her. "She helped me escape. Not that it helped – the doctors were reviving Deathscythe, so I stayed and waited for him to be born again."

Duo frowned again at the wording. Gods, his chest hurt.

Howard put a key into the slot beside the door, then placed his hand over the pad and said, "open the damn door. Myself plus two."

Duo snickered as the door opened and stepped through behind Howard and in front of the other Duo, forced to show his back. He shot a knowing glare at his other self as the door slid closed behind them.

"All right, stop babbling," Howard said the instant the door closed. The old man waved the other Duo away, and the taller him huffed and plopped down in a chair in front of a huge wooden desk – extravagance made to impress anyone who made it into Howard's inner sanctum. He wondered how often it was a Sweeper initiate, a Sweeper vet, or even a business associate. Behind him were several cases containing who only knew what, all locked up in case the gravity was lost. A computer sat on lockdown on the desk. "Hey." Howard snapped his fingers in front of Duo's face, and Duo focused once more. Howard gave him another assessing dressing down, and Duo feared the loss of concentration could get to be a thing before he died. Somehow, the idea of losing his mind was far more terrifying than his body slowly failing. "You asked how long you have."

Oh, yeah. More of that. He nodded. "Yeah." He pulled his braid around and fiddled with it. He stopped when the other him gave him a knowing look. "So what's the prognosis, doc?"

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

"Five days, six some hours. I don't know the exact time; I can't be sure it's the same as it was in my dimension, and every piece of electronic was destroyed in the room I arrived in, so I didn't see the time for a while. I still have Heero's old laptop, though I haven't been able to save anything. Maybe you and your fancy pants crew could rig something up. I didn't try to pull the best equipment out."

Howard seemed to let most of Duo's information blow right past him, but the old man always looked like he wasn't paying attention when he was mentally filing things behind that crazy hair. "And the pain?"

"Getting worse," Duo said, confirming something they all knew. "It was just a minor ache when I first arrived, but now it's a consistent pounding." He rubbed his chest again. "About a .5 at first, probably a four to five now." He smiled. "So maybe another week?"

Howard didn't say a word, but there was no mistaking the frown, the steady gaze, the firm, tense lines of the tendons on the back of his hands.

So little time. But longer than he'd had in his dimension. He could work with that.

He turned to his other self with a big grin, mustering it up from the darkest depths within him. The other him didn't seem to fall for it, even as Howard relaxed slightly. "You know what this means, right?"

The other him let him get away with the false cheer and cocked his head. "And what does it mean?"

"You have to help me prank Wufei."

The other him's eyebrows lowered. "You mentioned him before. Who are you talking about?"


	2. Cracks and Crevices

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing isn't mine. Duh.

Warning: I don't actually know dick-all about science. Creative liberties have most certainly been taken.

"_Choices are the hinges of destiny."_ - Pythagoras

Summary: In a world where everything has gone horribly wrong, Duo busies himself with a last-ditch effort to escape – and perhaps prevent. But Duo's last-ditch effort pulls him to a different dimension, and he finds that everything he knew no longer exists.

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><p>The Hinge of Destiny<p>

Chapter Two

Cracks and Crevices

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><p>Duo sucked in a sharp breath. There was no way that could mean what he thought it meant. "You mean someone else piloted Shenlong? How? That was supposed to be Wufei's! I mean, yeah, the guy never really talks – talked," he winced, hurt all over again by the loss, and of course the pain in his chest flared in that instant, "about himself, but even I was able to glean the 'clan rite' thing after just a few sittings with the guy. There's no way someone else should have piloted that Gundam."<p>

The other Duo just watched him with a strange expression on his face. Finally, he said, "you mean you knew the other pilots?"

The wind was knocked right out of Duo. He found himself stumbling. Almost blindly, he flailed until he could grab the other chair and sit in it. He didn't look at his other self.

He hadn't gotten to know the other pilots? How? Why the fuck not? "You mean..." He carefully switched. "Quatre? Trowa? H...Heero?"

The other him just shook his head. "Who, who, and..." The other him narrowed his eyes, apparently having picked up on Duo's hesitation, "_who?_"

The very question made him quail inside.

He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. There was no way he'd come this far, this long, suffered all this, ended up in another dimension where things were peaceful and he had a regular job and White Fang had been taken care of, only to find that his brother-in-arms, his comrades, his friends, the man he loved, didn't even know who he was, or he them. "How?" he asked, his mind spinning, reeling, the pain overwhelming now that the comfort of his pack, of his family, had been stripped from him all over again.

"Why would we know each other? We were never meant to meet, never given the same missions. We all worked in separate parts of the earth, kept distant from one another. We had our own quadrants in space. Like a well-oiled machine, or a finely-tuned clock. Why? Did you all just fly around like idiots all over the place in your home?"

_Your home_. It wasn't the way Duo thought of it. Not anymore. "Did you seriously not work with any of them? What about when Zechs attacked the earth with the Libra?"

The other Duo waved his hand dismissively, and Duo narrowed his eyes. He knew that technique – he focused on the other Duo's eyes, and saw in them the faintest echo of what he himself felt – a loss of pack, of brotherhood. But it was slight, while Duo's was gaping. Duo figured this other him had the Sweepers, and that had given him what he'd needed. For Duo, that hole had been filled with his friends.

Who, he realized with renewed pain, wouldn't be his friends anymore, but someone else entirely. Like Hilde.

Gods. He rubbed his hands over his face and ignored, for the moment, the horrible pounding in his chest and head. He had to believe that there was still something, something deep and bright, in those people he remembered from his world. If Hilde could still be that woman who took her convictions and strapped them to her chest like badges, then maybe the rest could have something in them he recognized. Maybe they could become friends again. Not friends like he remembered. Nothing, he was realizing, could take their places. Not even themselves, altered by time and circumstance. But these people, they were still the people he'd come to love. There was still a part of them in there. In time, Hilde might see him as more than some attempting usurper. And maybe...

He looked up and saw Howard and the other him exchanging glances – glances that had nothing to do with Duo's problem and everything to do with something else. "What?"

They both looked vaguely guilty for a second. Of course if was the other Duo who shook off the look first. "Actually, we could use your assistance, Mini Me."

Duo scowled fiercely. "Call me that again and you won't get it."

A smirk. The bastard. "Something has been happening here. In our dimension, I mean." Obviously. Duo gave the other him a look that was accepted with a small incline of his head. "We've heard whispers of something. Unrest."

"Are you trying to make it sound like some fantasy novel?" he asked.

"Would that make you more interested?" his counterpart asked.

"I dunno; do I get to be the badass assassin?"

"You're the wiseass sidekick. I'm the badass assassin."

Duo was about to remark on the wiseass companion's uncanny ability to die heroically, then stopped himself as the pain mounted within him once more. Well.

It seemed he wasn't the only one who came to that odd and abrupt conclusion, because the other him said, rather swiftly, "we're fairly positive it's none of the military groups, but instead political. But we haven't been able to really see much of it. Police forces haven't found much, but politics since the end of the war have fallen primarily on the Sanc kingdom, and the police there are... limited."

Duo frowned. "Huh? Just ask Preventers. They'll take care of it. They have a bigger hand in politics than you, unless you had a serious life-change overhaul."

He was given a set of disbelieving stares for his trouble. "Leave it up to Une and Noin, the lovers of the two extremists?" the other Duo asked, like maybe Duo had actually advised he jump in a pool of underfed sharks. "The ones who followed their men blindly into the end times? Those idiots? They cobbled together Preventers, yes, but it's apparent they feed Sanc the intel they want the country to learn, and don't actively try to promote peace beyond what they personally desire. How many times has that Une woman tried to get the Peacecraft girl to accept her presence in confidential meetings? And gee, Noin, married to Zechs, who happens to be the little girl's brother. All that's a good match all around, wouldn't you say?"

Duo's eyes widened. "You mean you don't actually know any of these people?"

The other Duo snorted. "Why would I?"

His chest nearly folded into itself at that. He couldn't believe it. "You have no idea who they are? You never worked with them?" He turned to Howard. "Even you? Then what about the Peacemillion?"

"What about it?" the other Duo asked, and Duo threw his hands in the air.

"Are you guys fuckin' stupid?"

The other Duo scowled. Duo belatedly remembered that that particular insult was a pet peeve of his. "Right. Well, screw this. If something's going on, then they'll know about it. Une's not an idiot. So you guys stay here and plan for shit all along, and I'll go out and get the help we need." He hesitated. He knew no one here would be the exact same as he'd known them before. It was a painful admission, one that twisted his stomach until he thought he might throw up. (Or maybe that was the dimension breaking his body down; at this point, who knew?) Could he handle seeing a different Quatre than the one he'd known? A different Wufei? Trowa? _Heero_? His breath came suddenly in short gasps as he thought about looking at Heero's face and seeing no recognition in those features. He thought he might be having a panic attack.

Duo Maxwell _did not_ have panic attacks.

Okay. Okay, okay, fuck freaking out about something that needed to be done. Needed, because fuck whatever issue they had going on in this weird dimension where no one bothered to get to know anyone else, Duo was _dying_. And if he was dying, by shinigami, he was no going to do it lying around with nothing but this giant city of Sweepers and some smartass taller version of himself to keep him company.

The other him snorted. "You think those people can be reasoned with? I didn't know I could be that gullible."

Duo's mouth opened before he could even input the message in his brain to shut up. "I didn't know I could be so stupid. It's definitely a letdown." A weird staring contest began. It quickly became a point of pride not to look away.

And then his other self said, "so you think you're smarter? You, from a world where, what? Everything went to hell? I thought you said everyone died. Did that include the other pilots? Une, Noin? But we're the ones who are stupid."

Duo knew, in his head, that the other Duo probably had the exact same issue with words defeating brain that he did. Still, he couldn't help the feeling of having been slapped. It wasn't gratifying at all to see the instant regret in his other self's eyes, or to see the heated glare that barely preceded the hard slap Howard gave to the other him's head.

He snarled. He clenched his hands into fists. And before he could say something he might regret, he stomped the fuck out of the room.

He did not, in any way, shape, or form, have any sort of stinging sensation in his eyes. And if he did, it was just more of the dimension's bullshit shenanigans messing with his system.

He made it through the inner sanctum, in which every single person gave him a hard look before stepping out of his way, obviously trying to see which Duo he was before realizing he wasn't _their_ Duo, and instead of joking with him or asking him questions, each and every one of them let him pass. Even Stefano, with his head still shoved somewhere up his ass, and Yoshua, his gaze darkly assessing, as if the idiot stood a chance against Duo – especially while he was in a mood.

That knowledge, potentially gleaned from interacting with the other Duo, might have been what stilled him. Duo didn't rightly care.

His shuttle was still in port, probably, unless the Sweepers had gotten in to a new and odd habit of auto-launching shuttles that were guilty of carrying unknown persons onto the Sweepers' home base. He got into that multimedia crowd of shippers and shuttlers and whatever else people did in this dimension with their damn ships and nearly shoved a man who thought it would be a good idea to bother Duo about directions, as if Duo had any clue where dock 42's animal cargo had been taken for clean-up, and finally made it back to his shuttle. Everything in him hurt.

It was the dimension sickness, or whatever it could be called. Did Duo have dibs on naming it? Was he the first to deal with it, or were there other people inadvertently – or advertently? – shifting through dimensions? If he got to name it, he should probably find something better than 'dimension sickness.' Shinigami's Grasp. Hm. He liked that one. So it was because of Shinigami's Grasp that he felt like he was being torn apart, and not because he'd had his losses shoved in his face like the people he'd loved had been nothing but trash.

It hurt, and it was a deep, dark pain, and it made him want to murder someone. Preferably himself. His other self. Whatever.

His shuttle was one of those boring civilian dime-a-dozen white things, because he'd felt kind've bad about stealing the entire shuttle when the earth was so ridiculously peaceful – the roads were all well-maintained, for crying out loud – but now he wished he'd taken something big and ostentatious and preferably a warship, if they had any of those left after the war, which they probably didn't, since Relena had demanded everyone get rid of their weapons, which had only made White Fang stronger, since they'd been the only ones to ignore her orders...

Duo clenched his eyes shut and ordered himself not to think about it, not to feel, not to worry about it, because it would all be over pretty soon, anyway, and all he needed to do was get out there and make new old friends...

He shivered. No. He would get the information he could glean from Une and Noin and Sally, if they were all working together in Preventers, and he would bring the information back to the other Duo, and his job would be done. Right? Right? He didn't have to seek out people just because he could, just because he missed their faces...

He was sitting in his shuttle before he even realized he was taking a damn side trip. He set his course, then thought it over and turned on a couple news feeds, flicking blindly through them until he saw what he needed.

He heard movement behind him, someone entering his ship without the authority to do so, and he turned around. He didn't have a weapon, and his chest felt like it was being pressed down on by a hundred rocks, but he could still kick some idiot's ass–

It was the other him. Duo stood in an instant, his hand moving to his hip with no order to do so from his brain.

The other him ducked his head down. Fiddled with his braid. The old move made Duo blink. "I'm sorry," the other Duo said finally, and looked up, his jaw tight, as Duo's always was when he had to admit to having been wrong. "I shouldn't have said that. They were your friends, right?"

"Brothers," Duo heard himself say, and winced again. This time, the other him winced with him.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and this time, there was emotion behind it. Duo recognized it. How could he not? The same yearning, the same need to belong that he'd had ever since the dissolving of his old rat pack, had been inside him. Until he'd found his new nest. And then that, too, had been taken away.

"I have to find them." Once again, he thought with a grimace, his stupid mouth had made its own decisions. But it was too late now, and he rolled with it. "I'll go to Preventers," he said. "Even if they're different, I have to try. It couldn't hurt, right? And I promise I'll do it." The other him nodded, shrugged. Duo hadn't needed to promise, he realized; the other him knew he didn't lie. "But I have to find them first. At least Quatre. At least him."

The other him opened his mouth as if to ask a question, but for once, he seemed to think better of it. Duo wondered if he would gain that control later on in life. He could only be thankful for it; he had no doubt the other him would have asked why Quatre and not the one whose name Duo had tripped over earlier. "Take my ship," the other Duo said instead. "Come with me in my ship," he amended in the same breath. It made Duo smirk. "I want to meet these people you call brothers."

The yearning was there again, tamped down a bit better. Duo almost felt jealous, angry. These other pilots would be this Duo's friends more than his, simply because they all belonged in this dimension. Even if Duo wasn't a ticking time bomb of imminent death, he still wouldn't have as much of a claim on them. But then he was merely tired, and content, and he nodded. He would meet them, he would have moments with those who had once been family, or like family, and he would die.

It was more than he'd had before – not the death, that had been pretty much guaranteed no matter what – but the chance for something a little more than dying in some haunted subway station with nothing but Heero's laptop for company.

It was better. It worked. It was enough.

Duo nodded. What else could he do? Besides. He was ridiculously curious. The ship was named Death's Hand, if he recalled correctly, and he just _had_ to find out what it looked like.

He wasn't even remotely surprised by the thick coat of black seamed into the hull. It probably took a good chunk of money to keep it that dark when it kept going in and out of the atmosphere, and he was positive the other him thought it a sound investment. Not just because of the cool factor – because, hello? Black! – but because it kept his ship mostly invisible in the darkness of space. It had come in handy more than once with Deathscythe, and if Duo was doing a whole bunch of clandestine research on whoever these political movers and shakers were, it would have come in handy at least once by now.

The ship opened its hutch, and both Duos climbed aboard. The one went straight to the cockpit, most likely going to get the thing started before Duo could scamper off and avoid the hell out of him – running and hiding, and Duo supposed it was only right that the other him knew damn well how liable he was to become a ghost the first opportunity he got.

The inside of the ship was open, nearly empty, with little more than a bolted-down bunker to hold whatever miscellaneous cargo needed to be stored in explosion-proof metal. But it was the walls that made Duo's eyes widen.

They weren't painted; Duo had never been one to learn to paint, and the other him didn't even know Trowa or Wufei, both of whom had a knack for colors and shapes. But apparently the new technology gave a person the ability to turn pictures into wall paint, or something, because a giant, life-sized picture of Duo with the Sweepers was blown up on the side of the cargo hold. Duo stared, jaw flopping open, at the very idea of it. He recognized Yoshua, standing just a couple of men over from Howard, and there was the guy who'd been painting the dog, back in the back, grinning cockily. More likely than not, whatever he'd been smiling about had given the group some trouble shortly after the picture had been taken.

But what really caught him interest was himself – the other him – smack dab in the middle in the front, one arm slung over Hilde, the other resting on Howard's shoulder, beaming the cameraman a wide grin and giving the thing a peace sign from the hand by Howard's arm. Howard had a long-suffering, secretly pleased smile. Hilde was looking up at the other him with that awed look she'd once given Duo himself, and finally he could see where the Hilde he'd known had once been.

And yet! Even more interesting – the rest of the Sweepers crowded around them, a couple in the middle of rolling their eyes or laughing. Hilde had on arm around him, that _look_ on her face, and both of them – Hilde and the other Duo – were leaning toward one another slightly, even though the other him had that arm on Howard. And Howard seemed to be fighting back a smile.

It was like family. Only, when Duo squinted at it a little bit more, he thought he could see something different in the stances of Hilde and him. Something that his Hilde and himself would have nearly retched over.

There was more than sibling affection going on in there.

"See anything you like?" the other him called, and he sent the man a dirty glare. It wasn't his fault the other him didn't know just _who_ it was that Duo liked. And it wasn't the other him's fault that Duo was seeing love as something wavy, almost maybe distorted. He felt like he was losing Heero all over again. This dimension's Hilde was _his_ Hilde, and she never would be. She had served in the military for years, while the Hilde he'd known had gotten out. Escaped. He didn't know her any more than she knew him.

What did that say for the other Gundam pilots? Who would he meet? Like seeing someone wearing his friends' bodies as meatsuits, he wasn't going to know a single one of them. Would Quatre still be Quatre? Duo couldn't imagine him any other way. Would Trowa be anything like himself? Duo remembered Trowa losing his memory, and only joining up with them against because of Quatre – Quatre, whom he presumably didn't even meet in this dimension. What did that mean? Would Trowa have even fought in the end? And Wufei? Had he ever gotten the stick out of his ass? Would he have even been like that from the start?

And Heero. God of Death himself, would Heero even be Heero any more?

He clutched his chest as the fire within him raged. His breathing stuttered for a second. Two seconds. Five. He could almost feel a sort of vibration under his skin, and finally he could acknowledge that, yes, he was literally being pulled apart. His pulse pounded in his temples.

Heero wouldn't be Heero. He would be someone Duo wouldn't recognize, and the thought of seeing that other someone wearing Heero's skin hurt in ways he couldn't even comprehend. Like he'd become a stranger to himself. Like the world he stood in, this ridiculously peaceful world, could just go to hell, too; he wouldn't be losing anything.

But he had a _chance_. Not a chance to rekindle an old flame or reunite with old friends, but a chance to... to... he didn't even know. He felt lost. Find peace? Die with dignity? Die, at least, with maybe someone beside him. Such a pathetic desire, but it was all he had. If he could keep himself from dying alone... it had always been his greatest fear. Just one person standing over him would be enough. And hey, while he died, he could help solve whatever political disaster was in the works. Maybe. A little bit. If nothing else, he could introduce the other him to the men Duo had known. Maybe they wouldn't be able to be friends. Maybe their differences were too great now. But it would be better to try.

He gulped in a deep breath when he could. He let his hand fall back down to his side.

The other him, when he turned to look, was looking at him as if he understood. It made Duo want to punch something.

"Duo!"

Duo flinched, even as he turned. The other him looked, too, as Hilde bounded aboard, but the only one she threw a glare to – possibly for _daring_ to turn at the sound of his name – was him. Then she ignored him. He felt like another picture on a wall. "Duo, where are you going?"

"I'm going with him," the other him said, giving Duo an authority he didn't actually have on this ship. Why did the action give Duo a warm fuzzy? Was it weird to get a warm fuzzy from oneself? "We're going to Preventers. He's right. I never even gave them the chance."

She stomped on-board. Each step echoed all up and down the hold. "You can't be serious. With this guy? Just because he looks like you, you think he's telling the truth?"

"Hilde," the other Duo said, and seriously, they needed different names, "I recognize him. He's a little different than me, yeah, but not enough for me to not tell he's _me_. You would recognize yourself, too. No matter what."

Duo wasn't sure of that; except for very brief flashes of recognition, the woman in front of him hardly reminded him of his Hilde in the slightest.

"It's difficult to explain," the other him went on. "But every time I look in his eyes, I see it. Me. Him. We're shadows of each other."

Hilde seemed to chew on that like one might used tobacco. She glared against at Duo, and fuck if he could stop himself from waggling his fingers at her. He even plastered on a grin, because it was an automatic thing, a shield that popped up before he could even think about it. It made her nearly double back. It made her glare turn into a snarl.

The other Duo sighed.

Duo didn't have time – or even the inclination, really – at the moment to try to win her over. It was too painful to contemplate, and he didn't appreciate the gnawing sense of loss that got compounded every moment he looked at this other-Hilde's face. He hurried from the hold, shifting around the other him, who immediately gave way, thank fuck, and quick-walked his way through the rest of the ship.

It wasn't the big a deal inside; more black on the walls, a couple of other pictures, most of which were scattered within the galley. Duo passed them all, knowing they were of people and lives that had nothing to do with him. But then Duo stopped by one, just before the ship opened in the front for the cockpit, and stared. It was just the other Duo in this picture, no other people – well, no other humans. He touched the wall almost reverently. The wings were there, black as sin. It was odd, though, because the other him had left him on, open and unprotected. The picture had to be of after the war. Probably right before they sent their friend into the sun.

Deathscythe was so beautiful. So regal. It was another loss, one Duo hadn't thought of in a long while. And it hurt. It shouldn't have. In the long one, it was the least of his losses.

The other him and Hilde didn't seem to be in any sort of hurry, despite Duo's need to _move_, so he spent a good few minutes looking around. He wasn't surprised to see the cockpit had been installed similarly to the cockpit of Deathscythe; he wondered if the picture was an homage of some sort, or perhaps an altar, given up to his lost buddy. But he didn't know if either really fit, because the first picture he'd seen had been of people alive and well. The other Duo's rat pack, as it were. Maybe it was just another damn picture.

Perhaps he didn't know everything about himself, after all.

He plotted in the course he wanted to take, since he apparently had plenty of time to do so. When they still didn't show up – and when another attack of Shinigami's Grasp ended – he would have to work on the phrasing – he idled back toward the galley.

It, two bedrooms, and a bathroom were the only other rooms save for the cockpit and the hold, and Duo wondered if that was because the other him couldn't afford anything better or if it was all the space he needed. He bet the latter; if he hadn't had the money for it, he could have just stolen it. He wouldn't have had any qualms over it, especially if he stole from Une or Treize or Tubarov. He probably still had money from _those_ accounts in his own, accruing interest. But the tight space meant he would be spending some serious time holed up in the guest room – because come on, the other Duo and Hilde sleeping in the same room would just be common sense; the two of them obviously swung toward each other – and he would be adamant on avoiding her stares and the memories they brought.

The galley was actually pretty wide, and seemed somehow wider with the four pictures of people on each side. Another picture of the Sweepers, then a picture of a couple of people Duo didn't realize. A third picture of who Duo could only assume were more Sweepers; since he didn't recognize any of them, they were probably all new.

It was the fourth that made him literally take a step back, and his heart lodged itself like a lead ball in his stomach. He'd mistaken it for another picture; this one must have cost a fortune, because there was no way in five flaming hells the other him or anyone else in the Sweepers could manage that level of artistic talent. But a picture it absolutely could not be, and if he squinted and moved a bit closer, he could see the slight dips and swirls of paint on the wall.

A woman with bright, achingly beautiful blond hair stood beside a tall, balding older man. Both were wearing formal garments, which Duo had certainly never seen them in. But oh, they looked great in them. And Duo could almost see it; if they'd been alive, he would have showered them with gifts. Dresses for her, suits and ties for him. And both would have told him off for such unnecessary material possessions, and he would have told _them_ off for telling him what to do with his (technically not, but whatever) money. And the idea of having them in his ship, showing them his home, would have made him bubble with pride if it weren't for the aching pain of it. He wondered how the other him could stand to have Sister Helen and Father Maxwell beside him all the time. Then he wondered how the other him could go without.

He was found there by the two _extremely tardy_ other parties after just a couple more minutes, and Hilde at least had been told to not glare, or perhaps she'd simply run out of them, but in either case, Duo was glad. He wasn't sure he could have handled any more of her vitriol. She did, however, send waves of fury through some sort of aura that managed to make even the slight trek to the cockpit a nearly awkward affair.

Duo went to sit in the guest seats, opting out of the pilot or co-pilot seats. The other him made a slightly surprised noise, and Duo sent him another glare. It took all of a half-second for the other him to realize Duo was only keeping out of the front seats because he knew damn well Hilde wouldn't welcome him in it.

It took him until he'd safely harnessed himself to realize he wasn't the least bit surprised himself to find Hilde coming with them. It was something she would do. She considered Duo to be a danger, and she would never send those she cared about into anger alone. That part of her had been something Duo had expected, even from this drastically different Hilde. It was weird to realize that, not only had he expected something from someone he technically didn't know, but that said prediction had ultimately been correct. It left him confused and floundering again.

The other him sat down, took one look at the coordinates Duo put in, and sighed. "Messing with my machine," he said. Hilde turned quickly to the other him, then glared hotly behind her as she took the co-pilot's seat.

"Your password was obvious," Duo said. He couldn't infuse the right amount of give-a-damn into his voice, no matter how hard he tried. The other him seemed to catch on, because he just just shrugged.

"Maybe to you."

Duo didn't bother arguing that, or even joking about it, because he couldn't think. So the other him started a course line based on the new trajectory. Duo thought maybe the red tape would make it take a while; he'd been ready to just go without waiting for the okay, like he had back on earth, because anyone who didn't know how to manually switch trajectories to avoid a head-on collision _in space_ didn't deserve to be sitting in the fucking cockpit, but in less than a few minutes, they received a tinny message of a woman's voice saying, "you're clear to launch." And they did.

Hilde was stewing silently in her seat for the flight out, and when they hit outside the colony and it was safe to move about, she stayed sitting where he was, glaring out the front sensor 'windows', and Duo just couldn't be bothered to deal with her overprotective ass. She wanted to treat him like some sort of fugitive? Fine. Duo didn't have the wherewithal to try to reason with her. Stubbornness, apparently, was a permanent personality quirk of hers.

He unbuckled himself from his harness and stood. The other him had left gravity on, even though normally Duo enjoyed the feeling of zero-g; he must have noticed Duo wouldn't have the patience for the floating feeling while he was so damn depressed. It was weird. Normally, he would think he'd just gotten lucky and the other Duo didn't want to deal with zero-g at the moment, either. But it was apparent there was something more to it; the other him was a bit tense, and kept sneaking him little looks. It had definitely been done on purpose, and if Hilde wasn't there, he would have thanked the other him. As it was, he just asked, "which room is mine?"

"Neither. None of it," Hilde snapped before the other Duo could do more than open his mouth, and both of them gave her a slightly-irritated, one hundred percent exasperated look. She actually turned enough to see both their expressions, and Duo saw her make that little double-take motion again.

"What she means," the other him said, "is that I only have the two rooms. It'll be awkward as hell, but we'll need to share."

Duo blinked. Slowly. He looked from the other him to Hilde and slowly, very slowly, back. Huh. "Okay," he said, also slowly, and gave the other him a _look_. He nearly laughed when the other him gave him a startled look that formed very quickly into a warning glare, those brows pulling low. Duo just shook his head.

"Duo," Hilde said as Duo left, and this time he kept himself from turning, knowing just by the earnest sound of her voice that she couldn't possibly be talking to him, "you can't be serious! You can't stay alone with that man in your room! What if something happened?"

Duo left before he had to listen to any more.

He wondered, as he made his way to the room closest to the cockpit, where all of his enthusiasm had gone. He'd been excited. The Sweepers were still alive. Hilde was still alive. The other Gundam pilots were still alive. It was all everything that he had wished for. And yeah, they weren't _his_ Sweepers or Hilde or Gundam pilots, but... but...

There wasn't really a but to that, was there? There wasn't anything more that could be said.

He may become friends with them again, over time. Well, over whatever time he had left. He might have more than just an older, more-scarred version of himself to watch over his last moments. He might even be able to make a new home for himself. It wouldn't change his losses.

He opened the door, keying in the first thing that came to mind, and was wholly unsurprised when the door opened silently without further ado. It closed behind him, and he leaned heavily against it.

It truly was like losing everything all over again. He was glad, viciously glad, that he'd been wearing black clothes, and he decided he would have to buy more, all black, all the way up to his death. There weren't many old church customs he'd been able to adopt, but the idea of wearing black for mourning – he'd been able to get behind that all the way.

Just look at the other him and Hilde. While he himself had never felt anything but brotherly affection for the woman, the other him clearly had a case of the whipped lover in him. They'd sat in the damn pilot and co-pilot's seats and leaned slightly toward one another, for crying out loud. Even with the stupid harnesses. It was a love he'd never felt.

If their relationship could be altered so much in those five years, then what about the other relationships? How would Quatre react to Duo now? Would he still be the little bother Duo had never had? Or Trowa? Would he be the older brother Duo had ended up looking up to despite himself? Or Wufei, the older, elitist brother who had taken it upon himself to 'babysit' the recalcitrant Duo?

Or, he thought with heavy dread, what about Heero?

He wouldn't be able to stand a Heero who didn't recognize Duo as, if nothing else, his very first, very best friend. What if Heero didn't even make it to that? What if he looked at Duo the way he had when they'd first met, as nothing more than an obstacle? What if that was as close as they would ever get, because five years had been too damn long?

He didn't want to think about it. He couldn't think about it. If he did, he just might break. And he needed to keep going. He wasn't dead yet.

Right. He would meet with Quatre. Of any of them, Quatre had the highest chance of being open-minded and good. Quatre had been the one to pull Duo in, after all. He'd been far more reticent after the whole Heero debacle (he had _not_ been turned on by Heero's blatant lack of give-a-damn, no, sirree), but Quatre had opened his arms without a second thought. It had been like meeting another rat on the streets. Despite Quatre being so high-brow entire colonies had been built in his family name, he had been just like Duo's old gang. If anyone would help him out, befriend him, give him some sort of home here, it would be his little brother.

* * *

><p>The days in the ship passed hellishly slowly. It wasn't the ship's fault or the other Duo's fault. It was, one hundred percent, totally and completely Hilde's fault. And maybe a tiny bit of his own, because if she wanted to be a petulant bitch, then he would be a smartass dick.<p>

The other him was actually the one to retreat to his room the most; apparently Duo bickering was giving him a permanent headache. Duo could relate.

It was day four when Hilde finally realized she couldn't win. The victory went something like this:

"You think you can fool everyone, don't you? You think you can fill Duo's shoes? You're nothing like him. And you never will be."

"No shit? That would be because I, in five less years than your dear wuvvle-bunny, have experienced even more shit than he has. You should be groveling at my feel for not being him. Or maybe kissing me? Or maybe that's just something that should stay between you two."

Deep, horribly deep flush that led to Duo cackling somewhat maniacally. "You have no idea what you're talking about!" Standard Hilde response, one in a million that Duo had been forced to listen to while he'd been messing with the little harpy. "And you have no idea what he's been through."

"I don't know what was altered during the war, sure. But before that? I could list it all out in minute detail, honey. Has he done that with you?"

Her jaw worked. No, then. Duo wasn't surprised; it wasn't something he talked about with anyone. Even his old Heero hadn't known it all. "You aren't him."

The stubborn redundancy of the thoroughly defeated. "He seems pretty damn sure I am. Where does all that confidence come from? Why doesn't he call me out on my bullshit? It's almost like he, who knows himself better than anyone else could, recognizes himself when he sees him. Me. It." Momentarily lost on wording, he forged ahead nonetheless. "So how come you keep pitting this fire under me, huh? I'm not trying to be a third wheel. That would be awkward, fucking myself. Masturbation alone with exhibitionism? Voyeurism? Are there even words for that?"

Hilde, again, flushed furiously. Some things, at least, hadn't changed. Sex was fine to talk about, so long as it had nothing to do with her. Then she turned into a shy girl next door. Ridiculously cute. Like a stuffed animal. Or a gerbil. "That's not–"

"So what? You're jelly over the fact that there's someone your boy-toy explicitly trusts? Because I gotta say, not trusting yourself is unhealthy. And weird. And as I said, I want nothing to do with either him or you." Duo waved his hand up and down her. "I swing both ways, sure, but I've never swung in your direction before, even when you weren't imitating Medea."

Hilde seemed momentarily flabbergasted; it had been the first time Duo had mentioned another her. She didn't seem to take it well. "I'm not talking about that! I don't care about your stupid sexual interests, you pervert."

Duo raised one eyebrow a slowly as possible. Somehow, the action derailed her attempt to continue. Possibly because the last few times he'd done it, his sarcasm had left her flushing and fuming and speechless. Her silence might have been a Pavlovian response. "No, you're trying to say you know better than Duo what he's like, what he knows, what I am (as if you know diddly about me, either), and what he should think. Funnily enough, after listening to your horseshit for nearly a week now, he still doesn't think you're right."

She sat and fumed while he once again tried to ignore the fact that he'd just used his own name to describe someone other than him who was, in fact, another him. If he thought about it, his brain might explode. So he never really thought about it. "Which is weird, you know? So many days to talk to me while we're in that room alone, doing _god knows what_," he said, just to piss her off and make her jaw drop, "and not once has he expressed the slightest doubt that I'm not another version of him."

"He hasn't argued with me, either," she said, her voice low, nearly resonating that tone of petulance.

He'd laughed. "Honey, that's because he wants to get in your pants."

And voila. Victory. He'd chugged a juice drop in celebration while she ran off to her room to, he didn't know, maybe stab some voodoo dolls or something. Military Hilde was a witch.

But she was still hilarious to poke fun at.

The other him surfaced like a cautious doe from his own room shortly after that, looking back and forth like he expected Hilde to pounce out like a viper and strike. The mental analogy made Duo grin; Hilde would probably do that, too. And this Hilde, Military Hilde, was so much like a viper it made Duo want to cringe. It certainly wasn't the Hilde he'd known. Thankfully, he was starting to think of her as Hilde's older sister who happened to have the same name. It was much easier that way.

"Work things out yet?" the other him asked, moving forward to grab his own juice. Duo couldn't help but notice that the other him had picked out the exact same drink as him.

"Yeah, I think we might have." Duo used his drop to hide his grin.

"What did you do."

It was not phrased like a question, so Duo didn't bother answering. "How far away are we?"

"Just another eight hours," the other him sighed. "You didn't mentally scar her or anything, did you?"

"Don't worry, she'll get over it," he said, and the other him just sighed again. It was weird. Everything was weird now. He leaned back in the chair he sat in, the one looking out toward the entrance to the galley, because if anyone was liable to get sniped on this ship, it was him. The other Duo leaned back against the wall of the galley, just behind and to the right of Duo. It was even weirder how the man's proximity behind him didn't bother him. "Why haven't you started dating her?"

The other him made choking noises. Duo grinned.

"What?" Then, "no, shut up. It's not like that." Duo looked over his shoulder. "Yet," the other him amended, and damned if his face didn't flare up, either. "Besides, shouldn't I be in love with your Heero?"

Duo hated how a replica of the other Duo's blush bloomed over his own cheeks. And he hated how he could see, in his peripheral vision, the exact smirk he'd just been sporting mirrored on the other Duo's face. "I don't think so. Or maybe? Possibly? I didn't think of Hilde like that, not once." There was a surprised noise behind him. "She was like my sister." The conversation flowed easily now; the first few nights alone in their room had been pure torture, full of stilted little, "so did you?"s and "did this happen?"s. But now it was like they had managed to get past the stupid questions and were nearly comfortable with each other. It was, after all, almost like speaking with oneself. "It was a completely different kind of love. Thank goodness." Duo quirked the other him a grin. "The idea of loving her? Bleck."

The other Duo didn't seem to know whether to be insulted or relieved. He decided to just drink his juice.

"When did it start, anyway?" he asked. "I mean, was it love at first sight? When I met her, she was so stupid and optimistic I thought her a complete sucker. She surprised me by having the slightest – and I mean _slightest_ – modicum of skill." Duo squeeze his thumb and finger together to show just how little skill she had. "Was she actually a good fighter when you met her? Because it was painful with me. Painful. I actually had to save her life on the battlefield."

The other Duo snorted, and there was a sense of wonder when he did. "No. My Hilde knew how to fight. She was the only one who went after me who did."

His Hilde. The two of them had apparently been thinking of it all the same way. Well, of course they had. "So why are you and I sharing a room – thanks for the zero-g on that, because there was _no way_ I was sleeping with myself in the same bed – and not you and her? You've known each other for years now."

Another blush. Good god, had he blushed like that around Heero? He had twin, conflicting bursts of embarrassment and pain. Maybe it was best if he didn't ask himself such questions. "It's not like that. Not for her. You've seen her. She has a hero complex for me."

Duo opened his mouth, about to make a very smartass remark. His other self glared at the dirty joke before it could even be said. Duo grinned. "You're an idiot. Which is painful, because you're a version of me. Even Heero and I didn't waste _this_ much time. That's amazing." His other self was not amused. Duo watched him shift from his bad foot to his good one and waved at the chair. "Dude, if we're gonna have a conversation, sit the fuck down. You're acting like we're gonna get attacked, and it's making me edgy."

The other Duo's gaze slid to the door, and Duo realized he was almost _expecting_ to be attacked – by Hilde. It made Duo tense. Apparently his tension was all that was needed for the other him to finally sit the hell down, though, so Duo counted it as a win. And he wasn't above using the other him as a shield, either. "As long as she thinks of me as Superman, she isn't going to love me."

"Superman?" Duo said with a snort. "More like Batman," he said, and heard the words echoed back at him at the same time. They both shared a grin.

Of course, Hilde walked in then. Her look was murderous. "The two of you – Duo, how..." She glared at Duo, apparently still unwilling to take her anger out on the other him. He rolled his eyes. Maybe the other him had a point. How many times had Heero and him gotten into a fight? And what did it say that he and Heero had a more stable relationship than these two – and the stability was shown through their temper tantrums?

But then the pain reared up again, and he thought, once again, that he shouldn't bring Heero up. Not even in his own thoughts. Especially not in his own thoughts.

He came out of himself in time to see that squinty-eyed empathy thing going on from the other him and a half-pissed, half-blank-eyed look from Hilde. He cleared his throat and gave her his best sardonic grin. "Come out to play some more? I do so love our little chats." He slid a look over to the other him before sliding it right back to her. She flushed. Apparently, the last thing she wanted was another conversation about her love interest while standing in front of her love interest. Oh ho ho, then. "Maybe some sport on how knowledgeable you are? Or how fake I am? Ooh! Let's go back to that one where you said my braid was hair extensions! That one was fun."

The other him snorted despite himself. He tried to cover it up with his juice, but it was too late.

Hilde's glare was coming back. Good; he didn't want someone who couldn't stand him knowing what he'd lost. "How about we discuss just how you managed to get here?"

Duo shrugged. "Shower stall. Laptop. Blueprints. Bam! Second dimension. Very woo-woo, wonky space-time shit. And the tech here? Weird. You have no idea. Well, maybe you do. But spray-painting pictures onto walls? _Weird._ Seriously."

"You couldn't do that in your dimension?" Hilde said.

"I appreciate the attempt at the sarcasm tone, but you might need to work on it a little bit," Duo said, pointing his juice drop at her. "But don't give up on your delusions just yet. I think I would genuinely freak out if you suddenly realized you've been stupid this whole time."

"You're a bastard," Hilde said. "You can't be him."

"You're a dim-witted, obnoxious cow of a woman who wouldn't recognize a _certain someone's alternative self_ if he, say, walked straight up to you and waved." He waggled his eyebrows and looked over at the other him, deliberately sly. She turned purple, actually purple. Duo laughed. "Trust me, if I didn't know any better, I would think I'd just lost my mind or something. But even I can't make Hilde into something like you. She'd still be her uber-optimistic self, all, 'I'm fighting for the colonies!' and 'you should sign up before you badmouth Oz!'"

This time, the other him actually snorted out some of his drink. "No," he said, nearly choking, partly on laughter and partly on juice. "She didn't!"

"She did! Walked right up to me while I was talking smack at the tv. Just like that! She gave me the damn application and everything. My god, it's never been so easy to infiltrate a group before or since."

The other him burst out laughing. Hilde looked like she just might combust. Duo couldn't tell anymore if it was fury, humiliation, or some horrible love-child of the two.

"You should have seen her face! She was like a kid on Christmas morning! I guess; wouldn't know about that. But she was so _earnest_, all 'I'm gonna save him from his misconceptions!' Oh, and she _could not_ aim. It was sad. I literally didn't know if I should just keep my suit in one spot or what; I was in more danger of accidentally flying _into_ one of her shots instead of actually getting hit due to good aim."

The other him howled.

"Shut up! I was born and raised in the colonies. I had no need to learn to fight!"

"Oh, my god, you should have seen it. And then her allies shot at her, and I had to save her, and she _got pissed with me for it!_ Woman did not know the meaning of grateful. Oh, and when she went to see me! First off, civvies have no earthly clue how to restrain a fuckin' Gundam pilot; it was sad. I'll give you the lowdown later. But she – and I swear, I can't make this up – she actually pulled out a gun, _safety still on_, and put it against my head. Literally. Touching. And got all smartass, saying she'd managed to take me down – I just can't, man, it was too good."

The other him was practically rolling. Hilde's complexion had dipped very far on the 'humiliated' side, and Duo was grinning outright. The pain of losing his Hilde was almost tempered by sharing the memory of her. Maybe he could keep the other pilots alive, too, before he died. Keep them alive here, with the other him, who would remember his stories.

If that was all he could do for them, he would do it. It almost made his heart light to think someone else would remember, would think on them. Would understand.

"I got much better!" Hilde snapped.

"Wait," Duo said, letting his grin widen to epic proportions, "are you admitting that I, liar extraordinaire, actually explained what you were like when you first signed up? That I, perhaps, might have the slightest inkling of what I'm talking about?"

Her mouth flapped open and shut like an old screen door. Duo wished he had a camera rolling.

The other him finally sighed. "All right, Duo, you've won this round." So far, Duo had won every round. "Just let it go."

Duo's brow shot into his hairline. "I cannot believe you," he said, and because they were the same person, the other him understood. It was amazing. Without words, Duo told the other him that he was being stupid by holding her to a standard that he didn't hold others to; that he couldn't make any sort of progress if he protected her precious little feelings and kept what he really thought to himself, and that if he just tried to make himself look a little more human, maybe she wouldn't have such a ridiculous pedestal with his name on it. The other him just glared.

And again. Score another point for Duo. Really, it wasn't fair. The fights were just too one-sided.

The buzz of the approaching landing point nearly made every last one of them jump. The other him acted just a split second before Duo did; while Duo was used to jumping at signals, the buzz wasn't a sound he was used to, and so it was the other him who led the way back to the cockpit. Duo, ever the gentleman (ha), let Hilde take the co-pilot's seat again, even though, since he'd arrived first, by all rights, it should have been his.

He was a saint. He should find his old priest garb, because really. Saint.

They were still about fifteen minutes from anything really happening – unless they received a crisis call from the colony, which wasn't likely with the whole 'peace' thing. So Duo decided to actually get down to some gritty details. "So who's actually leading this whole political scandal?"

"It's not a scandal," Hilde said, her personality apparently stuck on 'contrarian,' but the other him gave him a straight answer.

"His name is Osiris Sloan. He's been contesting Relena Darlian's position since she's taken it." The other him ignored Hilde petulant glare, as if the very act of telling Duo anything was tantamount to betrayal. "He's not affiliated with any old groups, including White Fang," he said before Duo could ask. "But it's said that many of the men he's seen with were old Alliance. That group that existed before Oz?"

There was a pause, and Duo realized the other him was actually waiting for a response. "I know. I fought them." He neglected to speak on the shit that happened at the New Edwards base because, well, they'd all fucked up. And it was a sore spot for his old Heero, and he'd just learned to not bring it up. No amount of 'we were played' had ever made his Heero feel better about it, anyway.

"You did?" the other him asked, sounding suddenly much more interested in the conversation.

"Sloan?" Duo prodded. The other him sighed. He hoped he never sounded that petulant. Had he? No. Heero never would have given him a second glance if he had. Surely.

"He's a big shot for one of the colonies. Apparently he experienced a lot of influence under Oz's rule." Well, that explained why Duo had never heard of him. Oz's influence never really got much more than a short kickstart in Duo's world. It was odd to think there were enemies here that Duo had never heard of, all because of a five year gap. Depressing proof that man's hunger for power would never be satiated. "He's been lobbying to take Darlian out of the game for a while now. He's used every trick in the book – too young, too inexperienced, too naïve, too _female_, for crying out loud. None of it's worked, of course." The other him flashed him a look. "Have you heard of her?"

Duo snorted. "I knew her personally."

The other him frowned. Duo recognized that look – it was the look of someone who was questioning his decisions, who believed he might have severely messed something up. Duo apparently knew far more people than the other him. His sphere of influence was wider. The other him finally said, "well, he's been slowly growing what looks to be a sort of militia. He's also repeatedly ignored the orders to get rid of any non-AI weaponry. It's been escalating, but quietly. Some people expect war."

"Assassination first," Duo said.

The other him nodded. "Yeah. Definitely."

They were silent then as the other him steered the ship into docking space, clearing himself for landing with someone who seemed unimpressed with how last-minute the other Duo's traveling manifests had been sent. The other him smoothed it over with a lie about documents that were needed for the board meeting happening the next day – the board meeting Quatre would be attending.

Suddenly, Duo was nervous as hell.

It didn't take too long to land, Duo was sure, because the other him coaxed the loader into picking him above another guy who was reading the man the riot act for being only a couple of minutes late, and the loader apparently took a perverse glee in telling the other man he would have to wait some more. So maybe it was even faster than usual. Duo didn't know; civilian landing was still new to him. But every minute seemed to stretch into hours, and Duo was antsy to _move_, to _act_. If he was going to meet with this Other-Quatre, then he'd better just hurry up and do it, or else he might just find his fight or flight instincts carrying him in the other direction.

It was like meeting one's long-lost ex, Duo decided. Or maybe like meeting one's lover when they return from a war. Or maybe it was something a person couldn't label – meeting someone he thought he knew, or had once known, and knowing they were different now than they'd been, and that the closeness might be gone. Would be gone. Because this other Quatre and the other Duo had never met before.

The pain, when it came, ripped from his chest to his head to his gut, and no amount of rubbing made it go away. He gasped as quietly as possible as the loader finally led Death's Hand into docking space and gave them the all-clear.

The other him turned and looked at him as he locked up the controls. The man's gaze was hooded.

Duo gave the other him a fuck-all grin. The other's gaze darkened even more.

Well. He guessed it made sense that the other him wouldn't fall for it. It gave him a bastard mix of annoyance and warmth. With the pain roiling in his gut, he thought it just might make him puke.

The pain didn't ebb until they were far away from the ship, past the shuttle bay and sliding into the first cab they saw. Hilde managed to slide in with her arms crossed in the oddest feat of limber petulance he'd ever seen in his life, and the other him slid in next to her, sacrificing himself to the middle seat in order to keep the two of them separate.

It was a long, silent, extremely uncomfortable ride.

The buildings went from industrial to governmental in four blocks; it was pretty easy to spot. Boring, simple structures with little more to them than integrity changed to apple green lawns and bright white buildings with columns and tiny balustrades that no one could ever actually stand on and uselessly fancy walls, concave in places just to show depth, or perhaps to show how much money could be wasted on a single building.

The cab finally pulled up at one that had no less than ten World Nation flags all over the front of it, and Duo found both himself and the other him rolling their eyes. Hilde glared sullenly at them both.

Duo stepped out of the cab, his eyes trapped on the building before him. Inside was Quatre. Not his Quatre. Never his Quatre. But _a_ Quatre. And he needed his little brother something bad right then.

They managed to walk up to the gates before they were stopped by the patrolling men in black. Duo thought they might take about three seconds before he could take them down, and he had to fight not to roll his eyes again. Of course, taking those down in front of him would make those on the perimeter shoot him, so he supposed they were doing well enough. And three seconds was actually pretty good considering. "We're here to see Quatre Raberba Winner," he said. Before the man could snort and shoo him away, he continued. "It's urgent. Tell him we know Rashid."

It technically wasn't lying; it was semi-urgent, in that they were looking for vital information and Duo was sort've on a tight schedule, what with the imminent death. And he did know Rashid; it just didn't mean what he knew the man in black would take it to mean – that he'd been sent by him. Which he most certainly hadn't. The Rashid in this world didn't know him. Hell, for all Quatre knew, the Rashid in this world might be dead.

And that saddened him, because the Rashid in his world was dead, too, and that would mean that he would never be able to make the gruff man shake his head in resignation ever again.

The man in black stared hard at Duo, then at the other him, marking the similarities and narrowing his eyes. Duo lifted his chin, and finally the man put a hand to his ear – stupid move; honestly, the earpiece could pick up the sound of his voice just fine without his hand announcing which ear it was in – and said, "message for Representative Winner. An associate of 'Rashid.' Verify."

The man said Rashid's name like it was a code name. Duo bit back his snicker.

The other him looked at him with a raised brow when the man wasn't looking, and this time the snicker slipped out. The man glared, and they were ushered into the building, three other guards at least coming up to ensure that if they tried something, they'd get shot for their trouble. Of course, Duo alone could probably have taken them out without too much trouble, but with the other him beside him, the men were a joke, limp, Hilde and all.

He reconsidered that as they were led into a waiting room with only the one door. Hilde in this world was probably even less of a hindrance than his Hilde, and by the end of the war, she at least managed to learn the basics of stealth he'd taught her and had slipped onto the Libra. The Hilde with better military training and time spent with the other him could probably do even better.

"Hey," he said as the four men pointed imperiously at the benches and chairs at the sides of the room. He barely bothered to care about the luxuriousness of the chairs, red cushions nearly swallowing Duo up as he sat and crossed his legs, because fuck those idiot Secret Service guys, anyway. The other him did the same at nearly the same time, and they shared a grin before he continued, "did your Hilde sneak onto the Libra?"

The other him didn't bother looking over to see if the SS men were listening in, because they were probably trying very hard to listen, and they would probably presume anything they said was code. And if they didn't, they would think the two Duos were insane, and if they tried to make them leave, then Duo would be finding out just how many seconds it would take to take them all down. "Yeah, she did. Came out swinging, too. Took out a couple of enemies chasing her suit."

Duo grinned. "Injuries?"

The other him grinned right back. "A couple scratches. Nearly joined us at the end, but I talked her into staying with the Peacemillion."

Definitely better, then.

The room was so boring Duo ended up picking at the beige paint to try to entertain himself. The men in black didn't like that; they kept glaring at him. One kept twitching for his gun. Duo targeted him as the first to have to go if it came to it. Otherwise, there was nothing but a couple coffee tables and more chairs, and horribly outdated and boring magazines to 'entertain' guests. And if those didn't work, the endtables on either side of the benches had week-old newspapers. Duo went back to picking at the paint.

Footsteps hurried up to them from outside the room, and both Duos turned and looked. Hilde, arms still crossed over her chest in the most ridiculous impression of a child Duo had ever seen from her, finally turned, as well, and lowered her arms to her sides, either in preparation for attack or because she finally realized she was in a government building full of officials while she threw her temper tantrum. Judging by her blush, it was the latter.

Then the rushing person rounded the corner, and Duo's breath caught. At first, all he could see was that familiar thatch of blond hair, perfectly combed as usual, and the slight build, the short stature – and yea for someone being shorter than him! – and those sky-blue eyes. But then he paused, hesitated, drew a deep breath, because those eyes were not his Quatre's eyes. There was no sense of wonder, no joy, no buoyancy. There was no small smile ever-tilting the corners of that mouth.

Something was wrong.

Duo barely managed to lean forward to stand before Quatre's little brows furrowed and his mouth petered into a small frown. What had first looked to be outrage flickered into confusion before settling solidly into something else. Those blue eyes rested on the other Duo. "I know you," he said quietly. Duo wondered if maybe the memories of the Quatre he'd known had somehow found themselves over to this other dimension. Then Quatre shook his head and turned to the men. "You may leave," he said. His voice was that authoritative one he'd used at the end of the war – hell, whenever something needed to be done. It relaxed something in him, even as the mantra kept playing in his head.

_Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong._

"Do you want one of us to stay with you?" one of the men asked, and Quatre shook his head. When he gestured to the door, they actually left single file. Duo waved them a jaunty good-bye and found the other him doing the same. Hilde just looked between them, her face scrunching up into that weird constipated look again.

Quatre watched the men leave, then closed the door. Then he turned, deliberately standing over them, too close for them to get up themselves. "What is a Gundam pilot doing looking for me? And how do you know Rashid?"

The separation Quatre made between the Gundam pilots and himself made Duo frown. "Didn't you pilot Sandrock?" he asked, his mouth going off on its own, as usual.

Quatre frowned at him. "Who are you?"

"I'm him," he said, pointing his thumb at the other him. "But better."

"He's from another dimension," the other him said, his face completely straight somehow.

Quatre, bless him, was just as solid as always. He just blinked. He looked back and forth, from the other him to him and back, and his brows furrowed. "You both have the same center, but you're different."

Duo piped up, "five years will do that. Look, I'm sorry to bring up Rashid. He's okay, isn't he? Nothing happened to him?"

Darkness passed over Quatre's face, and Duo's heart sunk. But as soon as Duo felt the grief building, Quatre spoke. "No. Last time he checked in, he was fine."

Checked in? But Duo couldn't help the swell of relief. He slumped back in his seat, then rose up all over again. "And the other pilots? Do you know anything about them?"

Quatre frowned. It didn't look right on him, yet there were slight lines at the edges of his lips that said it did it a lot. A chill shook Duo at the thought. "Why did you come here?"

It wasn't subtle. It wasn't even polite. Duo sat back all over again, his breath stolen from him. He'd known going in to this that this Quatre would not be his Quatre, that there would be differences. And of course there were slight physical ones – still shorter, but more rigid of stature, and his baby fat was all gone now. Still-soft lines in a slightly oval face, aristocratic nose, hair cut just a shade shorter than when he was a teen.

But there was too much of _his_ Quatre in his looks still for there to be any doubt. No, the only thing that had really changed was his personality.

He was completely, totally different than the Quatre he'd known. And while he'd expected differences, just like with Hilde, he was left looking at a person who didn't match _his_ Quatre in such a way as to be another man entirely.

He opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but thought maybe the other Quatre wouldn't understand the question. Unlike his Quatre, maybe this one couldn't seem to read right into a person's soul. He took a deep breath. "Things were different in my dimension. What matters is that you, I think, probably, unless you're... even more different than the you I knew, know about what's going on with this Osiris Sloan character." Quatre's eyes gave him away for a second, and thank everything Quatre still had that shitty poker face. Duo grasped that little piece of his old Quatre and held it to his breast; it might be the only piece he got. "The other me knows he's angry about Relena, and he's trying to take over. Do you know if he's willing to do it with force? Or, say, just how much force he'd be able to throw at the problem?"

Quatre had always been a quick one, had always known just when to push all his questions and concerns aside and deal with the matter at hand. Duo watched him process the scant amount of information he and the other him had given him, and he saw as that brilliant blond head of his came to a decision. "He's staging a coup. The planning's about over; Rashid has gone to verify the situation, but as far as we know, he still has non-AI suits and a backlog of weapons confiscated from those in his country under the pretense of following Relena's law."

Duo frowned. He had no idea what 'non-AI suits' meant, but the rest sounded bad enough. "He has an entire country's worth of armaments?"

Quatre nodded. "I take it your aim is to stop him."

"Damn straight," the other him said. The vulgar phrase made Quatre blink, just as it had when Duo himself had first said something similar. Then, just as he had that day so many years ago, little Quatre blushed.

Duo turned to the other him, and he saw in the other him's eyes the same wonder he'd felt. Someone who'd fought in a war, who'd killed people, still held some sort of innocence inside him. But this Quatre didn't have it the same way his Quatre had. His Quatre had been full of hope. This one... this one seemed to have lost his.

He mourned the loss so deeply he thought it might have been his own. Quatre had always been the one looking forward, looking up, seeing starlight when there was only rain. He'd expected pain, meeting a Quatre that wasn't his. But it seemed this sort of pain could not be anticipated. Like putting on a salve; no matter how much one prepared, one always flinched at the cold.

"Then you'll want to see our records," he said, and he stepped back to let them up. While Duo stood without hesitation, the other him hesitated for a moment. Duo understood why an instant before he saw it: sitting down in that comfortable chair for so long had left him in the position to have to stand up on his bad leg, and it shook a little as he put weight on it. Quatre, of course, bred pedigree that he was, didn't so much as dip his gaze down. If it weren't for the slight quirk of his brows – an old look of concern that Duo recognized immediately from his old Quatre's mother-henning – it would have almost seemed like he hadn't noticed at all.

Hilde was actually the last to stand, and when she did, it was with several careful looks between Duo and the other him and Quatre. It seemed she didn't quite know what to do with the knowledge that Duo really had known a few of this Quatre's secrets, and wasn't sure whether to treat hospitable Quatre like an enemy or the well-known diplomat he was in this dimension. Duo wondered if her brain was tripping over itself. It probably was.

Quatre led them out of the room, waving away the two loitering guards and turning a quick corner deeper into the building. The walls were white now, and more flags hung like tapestries down the hall. Barf. Quatre seemed used to them, though, and ignored them. Duo tried to get a read on the guy, but it was like trying to read a stranger. He got the slight tension in his shoulders as a slight lack of trust, but the rest of him seemed... well, still guarded, but open. Rashid's name really was like 'open sesame.'

He cleared his throat. "So. Qat."

Quatre doubled-back, nearly tripped, and shot Duo a wide look. Duo grinned, even as he and the others had to stop to avoid smacking into Quatre. The blond blinked, then again. He frowned, then... paused. It was that look, the one Quatre always had right before he read people's minds. Like he was delving into a person's soul and reading it like a cipher. "We knew each other well."

Duo's grin faltered despite himself. "Yeah," he said. "But now there's you and him," he said, nodding over to the other him. "Even if there's only a sliver of the you I know in there, and the me I was – am? – in him, the two of you will really hit it off." He shrugged and shifted from foot to foot, and Quatre finally realized he'd stopped. He moved forward, down a perpendicular hall, then turning left one more time, and then he stopped in front of a room. Duo talked while Quatre put his fingerprint over the small pad by the door. "Can you tell me about those five years? Before the war?"

Quatre actually froze.

"Probably not," Duo answered before Quatre could do more than turn to him. "Probably pretty big, huh? Had to have been." He swung back on his heels. He knew very well that both Hilde and the other him were keeping their bodies balanced, as was Quatre. They'd never met before, and they weren't sure what the other would do. It was odd, because Quatre had never had such a problem before. He'd always been so sure of a person and their intentions. He wondered if that was it – if someone had hurt him. He thought of Trowa, then dismissed the thought. According to the other him, the Gundam pilots had never gotten together. But maybe that was just the other him?

He wanted to think that Quatre and Trowa would have the same reaction to one another as they had in his world, but he was no longer certain of that anymore. He wasn't sure if there was anything he could be certain of.

Quatre led Hilde and the other him inside, but stopped Duo as he made to walk past, as well. Duo was ready to be told to stay outside, that he wouldn't be welcome. But then he saw something of his old Quatre again, that shy, questioning look that he'd thought was dead. "You're from another dimension."

It wasn't really spoken like a question, but there was still a little lilt in the end there, like Quatre just needed to be sure. Duo hummed. "Yeah. It's weird for me, too." He took a breath, but then his mouth kept right on moving, the little demon. "It was supposed to send me back in time. To try to... undo things. Things got bad, Qat. You died." He hated the way his voice broke, how emotions leaked out like hydraulic fluid. He tried to bottle them back up. "But it didn't work right. The doctors – it was in the place in the desert, the one where you found the stuff for Wing Zero."

But at that, Quatre gave him a blank look. And Duo realized Quatre might not actually know what he was talking about. His jaw dropped.

"I – well – whatever." He waved it away, his mind skittering over and over again, thinking just _what the hell_ happened with the world if Wing Zero had never been remade. Did that mean Heero never piloted it? Somehow the thought just would not compute. "The doctors had a crazy amount of notes on it. I guess we could always go look for it again. Apparently they hesitated over it because they couldn't be sure of the laws that applied to it."

Quatre nodded. "The linear versus looped timeline."

"Right. Straight path no matter what, or unknown consequences." Duo rubbed his hands on his jeans. "Well, but they were more concerned with what would happen to them." Quatre frowned, and Duo said, "if there was a linear path, then they might not return to their time period, or if they did, it might be to find that they'd wasted time and resources. And if it was looped, then they would either return straight back to their shitty time period, or, you know... cease to exist."

Quatre frowned deeper, and those eyebrows pulled low into that concerned stare of his. "You did it anyway?"

Duo nodded. "I had no intention of going back, and ceasing to exist worked for me." Quatre looked startled. Duo thought he might have been, too. He wasn't the type to just give up. It was why he'd worked so damn hard on the machine. He'd wanted to try to save his world. His friends. He sighed. "Really, I just wanted to fight. Going down fighting wouldn't have bothered me."

Now, the chance had offered itself up to him again. Even in a world with peace, there was a battle to be fought. Duo winced and clutched his chest as the pain returned, building like volcano smoke. He still had some time. Even if he wasn't able to save his world, his dimension, his friends, he could save this one. The other him might have the family Duo had. He would, if Duo could make it happen.

Hey, it was a dying man's wish. Wouldn't it be nice if, just once, a dying man's wish might actually come true?


	3. Preventers

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing isn't mine. Duh.

Warning: I don't actually know dick-all about science. Creative liberties have most certainly been taken.

"_Choices are the hinges of destiny."_ - Pythagoras

Summary: In a world where everything has gone horribly wrong, Duo busies himself with a last-ditch effort to escape – and perhaps prevent. But Duo's last-ditch effort pulls him to a different dimension, and he finds that everything he knew no longer exists.

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><p>The Hinge of Destiny<p>

Chapter 3

Preventers

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><p>A mission. He'd once made fun of Heero for being obsessed with having one, with needing a purpose for the next moment of his day. But Duo understood now. It was a way to make sense of one's existence when there was no sense to be had. Nothing but suffering and loss; what was the point of surviving through it all?<p>

He'd had only the idea of going back in time, of warning his younger self and the scientists, to get him through the destruction of his world. But now. Now he had goals.

Get rid of Osiris Sloan. Help the other Quatre. Find the other pilots. Get the other him and the other pilots together. Build up that camaraderie. Make a family for him.

It was something. It was everything. It was a mission.

Serious time was over; while he'd always found himself dropping his defenses around Qat – the man was a genius interrogator, those stupid eyes of his – Hilde popped her head out to see what the hold up was, and Duo pasted on a grin. She slid her suddenly narrowed gaze from him over to Quatre, and with him, it seemed she didn't know whether to glower in warning or hide any trace of tension. Her eyelids seemed so confused. "Coming?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral. Duo wanted to know why she was being so cautious around Qat – he was different, harder, but still had the look of a little blond bunny. Quatre nodded.

"Man," the other him said the instant they entered the room and closed the door, "somehow I just did not expect you to bring me to see _the_ Quatre Winner." Duo blinked as the other him shook his head. "I thought a guy on security, maybe, or some technician. I nearly had a heart attack when the Quatre you were looking for was Winner."

Duo frowned. "There can't be that many people with the name Quatre."

The other him shot him a look. "A fake name, maybe?" Duo scowled at the other him, and was rewarded with a stupid grin. "It's just – _the_ Quatre Winner, a Gundam pilot? What the fuck, man?"

Duo looked over to Quatre. "Are you famous or something?"

Both the other him and Hilde nearly choked.

"I'm a fairly well-known politician," Quatre said, and the other Duo spluttered all over again. Duo gave him a look. Wasn't he the one supposed to be having a hard time breathing?

"'Fairly' well known?" the other him said, staring at Quatre with wide eyes. "Dude, I can't turn on the news without seeing your damn face on it." And then the other him turned to him. "You knew him? The fuck happened to kill _him_?"

The other him recognized the mistake just as soon as he said it. Duo felt like his smile had been pasted on. "He got sick from the radiation. It killed him."

Everyone in the room was a bit quiet then. Quatre cleared his throat. "Here," he said, carefully moving around Duo – _his_ Quatre would have clapped him on the shoulder and given him a look asking if he was okay – and moved to the computer. "Osiris hasn't been subtle the last few weeks. We think he's planning to attack soon."

The other him cast Quatre a veiled look from the corner of his eye as the blond typed something into the computer. Duo spoke up before the other him could freak out. "By 'we,' do you mean the Maguanac Corps or the other pilots?"

Quatre jerked another look at Duo. Duo shrugged with one shoulder and sent the blond a grin. "Sorry." But he was only sorry because he'd given poor jaded-Quatre a fright, and not for the question. Duo kept his eyes on Quatre until the blond straightened from his crouch in front of the keyboard. While Quatre didn't seem to have the physical scars the other him did, he had so many on his heart he frowned at Duo like he might be an enemy. Duo just leaned back and grinned a bit more. Unless Quatre had been hijacked and replaced by a robot in this universe, Quatre would loosen up soon.

And he did. He sighed. "The Maguanacs," he said, like the words were being pulled from between his teeth. While Duo had no problem with people being different, this could not continue. Quatre was defensive. Miserable. It was blasphemy to let such a Quatre exist.

Duo nodded. At the look the other him gave him, he said, "Rashid's the leader."

The other him showed recognition at the name, then realized both that Duo was relaxed at the idea of Rashid's group being in charge of gathering the information necessary and that he was tense and fidgety because Rashid and the others actually meant something to him. So while Hilde kept giving Quatre a look between wariness and skeptical consideration, the other him relaxed. "Mind if I sniff around?" the other him asked, gesturing to the computer. Hilde gave him a look like he'd been replaced by an alien.

"Sure," Quatre said. Those bright eyes kept returning to Duo, then sliding back to the other him like he didn't quite know who to pay attention to first. Duo took it out of the blond's hands when the pain came back; though he tried to fight it, to do nothing more than clutch his chest like he had out in the hall, Quatre's eyes narrowed, and he moved to Duo's side. Duo waved a hand at him, and the blond actually hesitated. So not his old Quatre. "What's wrong with you?" he asked. There was no venom or anger there. Those brows were pulled deep into that 'concerned Quatre' look. "It's like you're breaking apart."

Duo grinned. It was probably a bit lopsided; he felt like he was going to keel over. He made sure he could still breathe before he said, "it's nothing."

The other him tilted his head. Duo couldn't quite explain it to him. While this wasn't his Quatre, he still felt like there were secrets he needed to keep. And with the others, Duo always felt he needed to measure up, to stiffen up and take things in stride, even if those things involved his very atoms trying to break down and dissolve. And then there was the other problem – the old-standing desire to never, ever see that concerned look melt into worry. Because a worried Quatre was both a blessing and a curse. The Quatre Duo had known had loved, with everything he was. And when those he loved got hurt, he went into a tizzy trying to do everything and anything that might need to be done to get them well again. That tizzy also included a level of mother-henning Duo could not believe. Only Trowa had been able to rein the old Quatre back, and from everything Duo was seeing of this universe, Quatre and Trowa hadn't even met.

So no thank you.

The other him finally turned the hell back around and started messing around on the computer. Duo was surprised by how easy it was to let him go on with the business of it and not dig around himself. Guess he trusted himself. Ha ha.

He did have a couple of things to worry about, however. Big things and stupid things. He tried to put them in a list of importance and found one thing refusing to go down to the bottom where it belonged. He scratched his head. He couldn't believe how something so stupid was starting to bother him. He had been able to borrow some of the other him's clothes, at least. They were a bit big on him – damn it – but it wasn't like it was a need. Still.

He sighed again, unable to swallow it in time. The other him gave him a look. "Qat," Duo said, and Quatre turned to him, already trained to the name. Mwahaha. "Think you could get those guard dogs to let me in and out?"

Quatre frowned. "I can say you're all personal security. That'll get you through. But I will be personally responsible for you," he said, and Duo recognized the firm lips and pulled brows for the warning they were.

"Don't worry, Qat, I won't tarnish your good name." Duo gave the man a grin. Quatre seemed completely disarmed. "Too bad, though; I felt like a good murder romp through the palace."

Thankfully, no one in the room took him seriously. Not even Hilde. So he turned to the other him. "I'll be back soon."

The other him tilted his head, but didn't take his eyes off what he'd finally found on the computer. "I'll fill you in," the other him said, rather unnecessarily, Duo thought. Which was weird. Usually he wouldn't leave a room without that verification. It almost itched, trusting someone this quickly. He left it and walked out of the room, hesitating just outside the door. He had other, more important things to worry about. Even if they shouldn't have been considered important and weren't worth worrying about.

But he'd done it before. Keeping his hair for the first important person he lost, keeping the braid and taking on the garb of those he lost after that. It meant something to him. So he left the room, ready to trace his way back.

"I have to get going, or else I'll be late to the meeting," Quatre said from still inside the room, his voice only showing a slight concern for leaving unknown people on his undoubtedly-protected servers.

"Thanks for everything, Quatre," the other Duo said. Duo recognized the openness and smiled. He knew the feeling of needing to be polite and open with Quatre – his Quatre, though. But maybe this Quatre and that Duo went together like Duo had with his Quatre. The other Duo spoke again, saying, "I'll spare you the 'Qat' thing until we know each other better."

Quatre grunted, and Duo wondered if he'd been making the man uncomfortable. He hadn't seemed that way – confused, yes, uncomfortable, no. "It's fine. I... don't mind."

There was something there that Duo hadn't heard in Quatre's voice since the blond had thought he'd killed Trowa. Yes, there was something horribly wrong in this universe, and it wasn't just that some stupid politician was trying to gang up on Relena's space. The best thing that had ever happened to him was getting to know the other pilots. Even with losing them, he wouldn't trade what he'd had for anything.

These guys needed each other as much as Duo had needed the other pilots. Well, he thought, his chest coiling like claws, he still had a bit of time to set that right, too.

He hurried away, hoping the other him didn't somehow know he'd listened in. The bastard probably did. Asshole.

* * *

><p>Duo had already gotten his hands on more than enough money through a few quick hacks and an encrypted bank account, but he still felt edgy as he keyed in for the money at the ATM. But he got his money, and it wasn't monopoly money, and if the police were called, they didn't show up even after he waited ten minutes for their arrival. So he stopped loitering around the bank and searched for the first clothing store he could find.<p>

He'd been wearing black, but it seemed the other him had a lot of blue and purple. Hilde's influence, no doubt. He grabbed black tees, got fitted for a black suit – they actually offered to hem it, but seriously, no. He wasn't that bad. He made sure it was loose enough to hide a weapon or two, especially the bone knife up his arm, the one he'd gotten past the idiot Secret Service. Then he bought black jeans, and finally stopped, mesmerized, his cart nearly half-full of some goth kid's wet dream, his eyes catching on a set of black stainless steel rings for men. He went up to the customer service counter and asked for someone to help him out. When a young woman around his own age came to speak with him, he pointed straight to the black rings. There were only two in his size, but that was fine. He grabbed one bigger and one smaller, then those two, and paid in cash for the overpriced things. Then he walked two blocks down and one block right, following the instructions the flirty girl had given him, to a pawn shop to get them engraved. More money gone.

It was only once he'd left the building that he took the plain rings and slid them, the bigger and smaller ones on one side and one of the ones that would have fit him on the other, until the metal clinked against his old cross. He hesitated, however, with the last, and turned it over and over in his hands. While it felt right to have the engraving for 5 on the left of his cross and the engravings for 4 (the smaller ring) and 3 (the bigger ring) on the right, it felt wrong somehow to put the 1 with the rest. Possibly because the loss there cut deeper, possibly because it just hurt to imagine tucking Heero away, hiding him the way he'd hidden himself for so many years.

He slid Heero's ring onto his left middle finger, and finally, he felt a modicum of peace. As if showing that he hadn't forgotten about them somehow made the loss more bearable.

They were still in his memories. He was swearing with his own body to not forget them.

The bags of clothing were damn heavy by then, and he caught himself a bus ride back to the government building. He wasn't allowed to bring the bags in, which made Duo roll his eyes and demand someone babysit his clothing then. He made a point of counting out everything he owned first, and gave the twitchy-fingered one a Shinigami grin before finally leaving the morons behind. Once more, the security sweep at the door missed his knife.

When he got back to the room, the other him seemed to be rereading, his chin propped up in one hand and his eyes glazing over in front of the screen. The other him gave him a lazy wave, not even bothering to pull his elbow off the desk, as he entered. "Happy now?" the other him asked.

"Yep."

And the other him hesitated for a moment, just long enough for Duo to see he understood, too, and then nodded. "Well, then, you have some catching up to do."

"Is it interesting?" Duo asked. The other him and Hilde were in the only chairs in the room. And it was a pretty small room, windowless – probably to keep snipers away – and square, with a small but sinfully comfortable bed, a desk and chair, and a reading chair and endtable sitting in the corner. Hilde had scooted the reading chair over at some point, and she leaned practically into the other Duo's lap as she tried to read. Duo just plunked onto the bed and wondered if he could sink into the mattress and potentially drown.

"It's not really riveting material, but it's informative." Duo hummed to show he was listening. Thankfully, while the pain in his chest had bothered him randomly while he'd been out shopping, and on his way to the pawn shop it had once again grown to clog his airways, it was only as the other him started giving Duo information that the pain crescendoed into a raging fit, the ache turning to a kind of heat that made Duo break out in a cold sweat, and he clutched his chest as the other him said, "Osiris Sloan was one of the men Treize Khushrenada had left in charge of a group of colonies. He had power, wealth, and a totalitarian worldview. When Treize was killed – I believe by another Gundam pilot – the colonies were stripped from him and given their individual freedoms. From power to nothing. Wonder how quick that pissed him off?" The other him cocked a grin over his shoulder, then frowned and stood in a quick rush when he caught sight of Duo.

Duo tried to wave him down, but the effort to move shot sparks all up and down his chest to his gut and up to his head, pulsing it straight from placid to pounding in less than a second. The other him touched Duo's forehead. Hilde made a noise, but Duo couldn't quite catalog it. "It's already gotten bad, Duo," the other him said softly. "Maybe..." But the other him stopped, because he knew just what Duo would say if someone tried to put him on the sidelines.

So instead he raced out of the room, leaving Duo alone with Hilde, whom he almost expected to come up and try to choke him while she had the chance. Instead she got up and peered over his shoulder. He tried for a glare. It was probably the sucking-air sound of his wheezing that lessened the impact.

"You might be right," Hilde said. Her voice was also quiet. Duo realized suddenly that it was the exact same kind of reverence people had at the bedside of a person's deathbed. "He needed to come here."

Duo lifted his chin. It gave the added bonus of making it slightly easier to breathe. "You take care of him," he said. The order was once again diminished by his breathy voice. Ugh. "He's stupid, just like me. He won't ask for help."

Her lips actually lifted for a moment. "Yeah. I know."

It was why she'd followed him, he realized. Not just because Duo was, to her, an unknown, and therefore a danger to those she loved, but because the other him was lonely, and she recognized it. Yes, he had a new family with the Sweepers. But those men, even though they were veterans in the same damn war, they didn't know the same thing Duo did. They didn't recognize the pain of a childhood where the war had already consumed you. They didn't know the constant fear of death, the adrenaline of getting oneself out of somewhere alive. And they didn't know the sacrifice of being a Gundam pilot. Handing over all of one's own hopes and dreams for the sake of everyone else's.

Quatre, Duo thought, might have learned that a bit too well in this dimension. So maybe Quatre needed them all just as much, if not more, than the other him.

Well, Duo could take care of that.

The other him returned with a tiny bucket of water and what looked like a handkerchief. He wondered who the other him had pilfered the thing from. The other him dipped it into the water and rung it out swiftly before placing it over Duo's head. Duo hummed. It actually felt really good.

The pain in his chest slowly lessened, the other him constantly wetting the cloth and patting it over Duo's face. It felt odd. Not the cool water, that felt great. But he'd never been treated like this, not even in the Maxwell church. He'd never gotten sick, and he'd never let Sister Helen treat him as weak, anyway. So he was left at a loss as to what to do. Push him away? But it felt good, and he still felt like if he didn't concentrate on breathing, he might lose the ability. So maybe tell him off? But it felt _good_.

He waffled back and forth until the pain finally ebbed entirely, and then the other him sat back, looking almost as lost and confused as Duo felt.

"So? The news?" Duo prompted, trying to break the silence without it crashing. He failed.

The other him sat back and rubbed at the scar on his face. It was a habit Duo hadn't had occasion to pick up. "Sloan's got an armory. Well, several, all interconnected throughout the three colonies he'd once been in charge of. Most are stored on an old meteor dump site."

"Lemme guess. That's where Rashid is."

"Got it in one," the other him said, quirking him a small grin. He still looked befuddled. "He's going to start attacking soon. The embassy, most likely. The only problem is that he's also going to launch an attack at several other points, and he most likely has mobile suits."

"Sounds like two problems," Duo grunted.

"I was trying to be optimistic."

Duo sent the other him a droll look.

The other him sat forward a bit and ticked items off with his fingers. Duo saw another scar he didn't have, just on the inside of the other Duo's right forefinger. "He has mobile suits. By the looks of it, no less than fifty. Considering every other nation has followed Miss Peacecraft's laws on getting rid of all non-AI suits and machinery, that means the man's virtually unmatched. That means he could have several mobile suits scattered over the area, and there would be no defense against them."

Duo held up a hand. "Hold on for a sec. Is anyone going to explain this 'non-AI' thing to me?"

The other him actually gave him a wide-eyed look, as if they hadn't been over the whole 'different dimension' thing about a thousand times by now. "I thought you had Gundams?"

Duo scowled. "We did," he said. "Technology? Different? Yes? Remember? Maybe?"

The other him scowled right back; Duo had always hated being treated like an idiot, even jokingly. "So I take it your Deathscythe didn't have the Zero System in it?"

Duo froze. The other him tensed, as well, sensing Duo's sudden battle-readiness. But it was aimless, and Duo struggled to get himself under control. His buddy was infected with that parasitic... _thing?_ And the other him hadn't fought against it? Hell, he'd _battled_ in it? Willingly? And Quatre? Well, Quatre had used it in his dimension, too. But still! Had that cursed thing messed him up? Was it somehow responsible for whatever had happened to him?

"What is it?" the other him asked, hovering suddenly by Duo's side, as if he was about to collapse or faint or something. Even if he had a valid reason for acting that way, it still grated. Duo was not a damsel in distress. Dammit. "Are you all right?" the other him asked. Duo was ready to bite the bastard's head off until he saw the odd look in the other him's eyes. More of that confused, lost look. Because Duo had never worried about someone to the point where he'd jumped up – well, he had, a couple of times, but those had always ended horribly. And Duo saw how, at the same time he realized it, the other him realized, and a horrible crashing look came over his face, and Duo suddenly felt like a heel for dying.

"You used the Zero System?" he whispered. He looked the other him up and down as if there could be some sort of sign stamped on his skin. Maybe in his eyes? But nothing; he looked completely sane. Well, Heero looked sane after using the Zero system. Or as sane as that man ever looked, ha ha. But the other him? Could he have handled it? Was Duo just mentally weak?

"So you know about it?" the other him asked. More confusion. "So Deathscythe _was_ cyber-conscious?"

Words. Duo was certain the noise that just jumped out of the other him's throat was supposed to be words. "What?"

"Or not," the other him muttered.

Someone knocked on the open door, and Duo turned to find Quatre standing there, an odd, almost trepidated look on his face. "The Zero System may not have been perfected in your world," the blond said, and Duo gave the man some mental applause for accepting Duo's explanation of events. That part of Quatre, the part that had always known whether someone was telling him the truth, seemed to still be there. And with his acceptance of Duo's story came something that looked a lot like hope.

"Perfected? The doctors hated it so much they got rid of everything but the blueprints. Wing Zero, remember? You found the plans and made the Gundam and took it out for a spin." Duo waved his hand around in what to him was Quatre spinning off with a Gundam and what to others might have been signs of epilepsy. "You mean they actually went back to work on the damn thing?"

"It's what made them choose to wait another five years," Quatre said. Duo knew his old Quatre enough to spot the weariness associated with a long and obnoxious length of time with other politicians. He quirked the poor blond a grin.

"Bad one today, huh?"

Quatre looked startled, and Duo remembered that this one didn't know anything about him, and didn't expect any knowledge in return. It hurt. He was a stranger to those who had been his best friends. Well, like his best friends. Best friend clones? Whatever. But then this Quatre gave Duo a small grin and said, "yes," and Duo felt an echo of Quatre's own hope in his chest.

"Well," the other him said, "if it's about the Gundams, then yeah, they have a better version of whatever it is you're freaking out about." Duo made a face at the man. The other him made the same face right back. "And it gave them something akin to a consciousness. The non-AI bit, though, was just the queen's way of keeping the things for us. They only work for us, anyway; no one else can pilot them, and that made a few people uneasy about our level of power. The non-AI thing gave the Gundams 'rights,' as it were."

Duo frowned. "But why not just get rid of them?"

The other him gave him a scandalized look. Quatre did the same. "If you knew what I was talking about," the other him said slowly, "you wouldn't say that. They're people, and part of you."

Duo just gave the other him a blank stare. Well, he would just have to check and see if Heero – if Heero is alive in this world, but don't think about that, just don't – had gotten rid of Wing. If he hadn't, then Duo could trust that there were extenuating circumstances. If he had, then no matter what the other him said, Deathscythe would have to go. Duo would just have to kill his buddy all over again. That was fine; he'd lost so many friends already, what was another one?

"Did you finish reading the reports?" Quatre asked when it was clear Duo wasn't going to continue his side of the conversation. The other him nodded. "Then you all know about the attacks."

"I haven't yet told him where they're to take place," the other him said, nodding over toward Duo.

"Then, Duo, if you could..." Quatre trailed off as both Duos turned to him. A strange look passed over his face. "Um, Duo-From-Another-Dimension, if you could..."

Duo laughed. He couldn't help it. "Oh, no," he said, nearly bent at the waist in hysterics. "That'll never do! Here, here," and he wiped a tear from his eye and waved his hand, grinning up at Quatre. "You can call me–"

"No," the other him said.

Duo glared at him. The scarred bastard actually had the audacity to cross his arms like some sort of snobbish principal. "No," the other him said again. "You are not going by that name."

"Why not? I already do," he said. "Besides, it's perfect. I'm Shi–"

"No." The other him looked up to Quatre. "No." Then he grinned and looked back to Duo. "We can call you Mini Me."

Duo scowled. "You can be Scarface."

"Trio."

"Gimp."

The bastard's smirk widened. His eyes narrowed. "Junior."

Duo outright snarled, growl and everything. _"Senior_._"_

Quatre clapped his hands together. "Well! We can wait on that minor issue for now, shall we? Until then, you, Duo," Quatre said, pointing to Duo, "shall we get you caught up while the other Duo," he said, pointing again, "gets everything together? I would like us all to retire to my home for now, if we could."

Such a politician. Duo wrinkled his nose, but he nodded. "Yeah, tell me about the places to be attacked and the rest of the firepower. _Senior_ here can go collect the baggage." He waved the man on. "Carry on, stooge."

The other him glared. "See you in a bit, _Junior_."

Ugh.

Quatre pulled him aside, and though Duo had no idea where the blond was taking him, he fell into step with the man, anyway. It was probably insanely stupid of him; this was not the Quatre he knew. But even as he tried to raise his guard, he found himself walking sedately, one hand even in his pocket, no matter how many times he pulled it out. Like a magnet, it slid straight back in. Wayward hand. Quatre dragged him down a few hallways, until he met up with a few bigshots. Duo glared at a couple who came to speak with Quatre, and the men stopped in the middle of the hallway, unsure if they should treat the supposed bodyguard with respect or just stay the hell out of the way. Quatre walked past them all, and when they made it to a clear hallway again, the blond turned and sent Duo a giant grin. Well, maybe he _was_ Duo's Quatre. A little bit.

This entire dimension thing was just confusing.

Finally Quatre led Duo to a small, empty room, a little square thing with one thin window and a couple of chairs facing some boring seascape. Duo cocked an eyebrow as Quatre closed the door and turned to the painting. "Four places could be struck, but most likely only three of them actually will. The first, and most obvious, is the Sanc estate." Duo nodded. That one was just common sense, in any dimension. "The second is here, at the embassy. It will most likely be the first target, and a decoy to divert attention from Sanc. And when Sanc is attacked, Preventers HQ most likely will be, as well, in order to keep them from reaching Miss Peacecraft."

_Miss Peacecraft_. Duo didn't think he'd ever heard her name said like that. It sent shivers up his spine. He barely managed to stop himself from correcting Quatre. Did Relena not know any of them? Was she fighting to lead this world alone? Did she have anyone watching over her from the myriad of people endlessly trying to kidnap or kill her? Had she just gotten pamphlets made to hand out to every person kidnapping her, to show them what to expect from the situation? She'd gotten kidnapped so often even with the pilots next to her; he couldn't imagine how often it happened without them around.

"And the rest?" he asked, trying to think of where he might be able to find the other pilots. Where could he even start? Quatre was the only high-profile one of them, and he'd been counting on the blond to lead him to the others. Even if he'd never gotten in contact with them, wouldn't he have tried, or wanted to, or even just considered it? But this wasn't his Quatre, he reminded himself for the millionth time, and when he saw the short hesitation in Quatre's eyes, he could believe it. His Quatre would have trusted him implicitly. "If it were me," Duo said, "I'd hit one of the L1 colonies. Make us choose civilians or leaders." A light in Quatre's eyes. Well, then. He was right there, at least. "The other place?" He hummed, tapped a foot. "This place is only about a thousand miles from Sanc. Before they hit Preventers, they might want to hit a place far enough to force people to got o the other side of the world? Though I have no idea where would be important enough for that."

Quatre cleared his throat. They're going to attack the second grouping of colonies in the L1 sector. Rashid checked the timing; it should happen in just a few days, and will be about the third to be attacked."

Which meant two others first – the faraway place, most certainly, and then Sanc, and, right around the same time as Sanc, the colony cluster. Then, if all else failed, the embassy would be hit, because if you can't chop off the head, then chopping off its legs and arms couldn't go amiss. And if the colonies were going to get hit in a few days, then the faraway place was no more than two days away, and potentially less than one. They didn't have much time at all, and yet Quatre wanted them to retire to his home?

_Ah_. Of course. He wanted to get to Sandrock.

"Qat, I'll leave the other me and you to take care of that, okay? We need somebody meeting with the others before this attack hits." At Quatre's blank look, Duo realized Quatre hadn't been listening with that ESP sense of his, where even though Duo often spoke in the middle of his thoughts, Quatre picked right up on it. "Sorry. I know you want us all to meet at your place and go over the plans before you grab Sandrock and jet, but we need more people on this than the Maguanacs and you and the other me." Duo jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "And we need you guys and the Preventers to work together, right? I'm sure they have a good amount of info, too, even if they don't have what you do. They'll be coordinating their own plans of action, and it would help everyone if we all worked our plans out together. I'll grab the Preventers, and you and the other me can work to plan out what you can while I do. Okay?"

Quatre stared at him with wide oceanic eyes. "Okay," he said, and Duo twisted around to leave. "Duo."

Duo turned right back around. "Yeah?" That voice had been _his_ Quatre's. Slightly breathless, a bit hopeful, almost uncertain. The sort of Quatre that was about to ask Duo a personal question and wanted Duo to not be mad at him for it. Duo smiled. "What is it, Qat?"

And oddly enough, the nickname relaxed him. "Did – do you know if my father lived in your dimension?"

The question sounded so innocent, almost childlike. Duo hated having to shake his head. Quatre's eyes sparked in pain. "No," Duo said. "It messed you up bad. If it weren't for Trowa..." But Quatre, in this dimension, didn't know Trowa. And, in this dimension, before the Gundam pilots had ever even been released for Operation Meteor, Treize Khushrenada had already taken control of the colonies. Which meant the Winner Foundation's head would already have stood up against the Oz insurgency. Which meant, before Quatre was ever a Gundam pilot, his father had been killed by the colonists.

Duo gasped as it all crashed on him, and despite himself, he felt something like agony twist his chest. Quatre winced and rubbed his chest, then blinked and stared at Duo like a stranger all over again.

Gods, no wonder Quatre wasn't his Quatre. Little Qat had lost it for a bit after what had happened with his father. Duo hadn't been there to witness it, but one drunken night after Quatre's death, Trowa told Duo all about it. How Quatre, in Wing Zero, had run around in outer space, destroying anything and everything he met up with. How the little blond had even destroyed a colony. How, when Trowa and Heero had gone out to meet up with him, Quatre had been mad with grief, lost in confusion. How only Trowa's plea to come back, to bring back the Quatre he'd known, had calmed Quatre down. (And _that_ piece had been given to Trowa via Heero, who had been there to watch Quatre nearly lose it again after having killed Trowa.)

"Qat," Duo said, "why did you become a Gundam pilot?"

Quatre stood straight, but it seemed almost like Quatre was receiving blows. "The colonies couldn't be trusted with the future, or with their own happiness."

Duo wanted to hug him. Quatre had always been a tactile person, even though Duo was anything but. He hesitated for a second, then said _to hell with it_. Even changed, this was Quatre at his core. Embittered and hurting, this was a man just as kind and good as his Quatre, and like another little brother, Duo would protect him with his life. And this time, he wouldn't fail.

He swore, as the man, now the tiniest bit taller than him, and damn everyone for growing taller than him faster, wrapped cautious arms around Duo's waist and squeezed suddenly as if beneath his feet was a riptide, he would find Trowa Barton and save his little brother. Duo squeezed Quatre back, just as hard. "You and the other me will get along great," he said, suddenly sure of it. "I promise, Qat, you aren't alone anymore."

Quatre's shoulders jumped, and Duo recognized the signs of little Quatre's tears. He didn't say a word as Quatre struggled to get himself back under control. He stayed silent until finally, Quatre hid his face in Duo's chest and nodded. And he kept holding Quatre until he finally pulled back himself, minutes later, and gave Duo a tiny little grin before shooing him on his way.

And it was only after Duo turned down several corridors and finally found a janitor's closet that he sunk to the floor and tried in vain to catch his breath.

* * *

><p>He didn't have his computer, so it was with a dwindling supply of money that he booked himself a quick flight to Sanc.<p>

He would be lying to himself if he didn't fidget the entire trip, trying to imagine just what he would say if he walked into Preventers and found Heero there. Really, what _could_ he say? 'Hi, I'm your almost-boyfriend from another dimension! I know you're not him, but do you mind terribly if I fawn all over you and cry inconsolably about my loss and how much I missed you?'

Yeah, maybe not.

Then again, any meeting was bound to be awkward and depressing. If meeting a not-Quatre could get him this messed up, he didn't want to imagine meeting a not-Heero. He suffered chest pangs just thinking about it. And apparently he was picking up a new habit, where instead of fiddling stupidly with his braid, he twisted and tugged on the ring on his finger. He stared long and hard at the _'1'_ on the face as the shuttle jockeyed into the landing dock. The engraving was thin, slightly, like a jagged slice across the sensitive pad of his thumb.

As soon as the lights for safe exit flicked on, Duo was out of his seat.

Sanc wasn't much different than it had been before – well, before it had become a corpse-ridden pile of craters. Those few months before the Maremaia uprising, then the weeks before White Fang's return to power, Sanc had been this: streamlined buildings of cream and white, houses cut away from the government buildings in the back, businesses lining the streets on either side, joined nearly to the hip next to the hill leading to the Sanc estate, then petering off into house-like buildings that acted as quaint shops – a bookshop with little settee areas, an antique store nearly filled to the brim, a freakin' toy train store where one could buy knick-knacks for train sets, if one was interested in such an odd hobby.

Around the houses sat the general stores and the food stores, hidden for those who lived in the area, making sure the small businesses saw the customers first. Sanc, home of the cutesy ideals that somehow managed to stay afloat.

Preventers would be hidden far away from everything, Duo knew. In his world, it had barely left the princess' estate before everything started crashing down – literally, as White Fang turned its attention immediately upon Sanc. He didn't know exactly where it would be, however – far from the princess' home, since she would never want to be affiliated with such violence, oh ho, no sir, but definitely close enough that, if the situation called for it, she would get immediate reinforcements. So, he reasoned, just off the shopping district, fairly close to the shuttles. Yay; short trip.

Duo was wholly unsurprised when, just two blocks to the left of the docks, he found a sign pointing him toward Preventers. How useful. He wondered how Preventers enjoyed their publicity. Well, whatever. Their loss, his gain. He found a bus stop, but when he saw that the bus wouldn't arrive for another twenty minutes, he decided to just hoof it the rest of the way. It was only another five blocks or so; he would arrive around the same time the bus would have come to pick him up.

Before he left the bus stop, he sat on the bench and waited for his chest to stop tearing apart. It took so long he feared one of the passersby was going to call for an ambulance. He got up on unsteady feet and started moving, hoping he would be over it before he arrived at the place.

The Preventers building was ostentatiously visible long before he arrived; it was modern, and about eight stories tall to everything else's four, five max, and steel and beams and cables where everything else was stucco or brick or something Duo couldn't even identify but thought was maybe just tarted up plaster. It shot into the sky like a sore thumb as soon as he escaped the docks and the shuttles stopped shooting past his vision. No wonder Preventers didn't care about the signs. They were the least of their problems when it came to visibility. He chuckled. Of course, Relena would never allow them to hide as if they didn't exist – that would be like trying to hide weapons, or to try to encourage some sort of underhanded violence, or whatever ridiculous ideas the woman could think – assuming, he thought soberly, that Relena was the same girl he'd known. Which she probably wasn't. And Une, assuming she was remotely like the old Une, would have proudly displayed the Preventers she helped put together, anyway.

Still, he wasn't positive those were the reasons, not anymore. He couldn't count on his own memories to tell him what people were thinking. He had to remind himself that he didn't really know these people. Even after learning why Quatre was the way he was, it didn't change the fact that he still wasn't the Quatre he'd known. And how painful was that, that even after learning about what this Quatre had gone through, he'd thought only of his old Quatre, of what _that_ Quatre would have wanted. What if this Quatre hadn't wanted touch? What if that tactile Quatre had been gone? He could have messed things up considerably.

He rubbed his face with one hand and sighed as the ring on his finger caught for a millisecond on his nose. He had to remember that the ones he'd loved were gone. He couldn't pretend to stick them into these other pilots' shoes and act as if he had them back. That was an insult to them and to these new guys in this dimension.

But, oh, how this Quatre had seemed just like his old Quatre in that instant. He couldn't have helped, then, but to do exactly as he had. And thankfully, this Quatre hadn't seemed too upset about it. He'd almost appeared grateful.

Because, he thought, confusing himself all over again, for the most part, _this_ Quatre actually _was_ _that_ Quatre, only five years different. So it was Quatre, but not-Quatre, as well. Clone-Quatre? Only it lived the same first fifteen or so years that his Quatre had.

_Give it up_. He no longer made sense even to himself.

And thank goodness, but it was around then that he arrived in the Preventers parking lot.

He was unsurprised to see the door wired with some sort of metal detector, and wouldn't have been surprised if it also informed whoever was watching – and Une herself, if she was half the psychotic witch she'd been in his world – of just who it was that passed through those doors. Of course, what did he have to worry about? It could recognize him and he'd still be in the clear. And of course, if none of the Gundam pilots had ever gotten to know one another, what were the chances they would have record of some random street brat? And if they did recognize him, wouldn't they flip their gourds trying to figure out how he'd de-aged himself and lost some scars?

If they did think he was Duo Maxwell, watching their reactions would almost be as good as watching Howard's had been.

He strolled in, amazed when the sensors around the door actually went off; so his bone knife had finally been caught? And look at that reaction! Every single freaking Preventer in the lobby stormed the door, guns up, some automatically kneeling onto one knee while other aimed over their shoulders. Duo grinned and lifted his hands. "I'm here to speak to Une about what's gonna happen in a couple of days. I'm a Gundam pilot." True and true; he just wasn't one of _this world's_ Gundam pilots. Splitting hairs, really.

None of the officers seemed particularly appeased, and Duo rolled his eyes. "Do I look like I have a weapon on, guys? Really? Maybe a gun hidden in my jeans? Or up the bottom of my shirt, maybe. A really tiny, compact gun."

"There's far more weapons than just guns," one man said when a few actually flagged. Duo grinned wider as the man stepped forward. He was older than Duo, too, but only by a year. Duo wondered how old the guy would have been in his world, if he'd have been alive. If he'd even joined Preventers yet, or if he'd ever had the inclination. In any case, it had been a good choice for him in this world. The others, several much older than Duo, got their shit together at the man's words and aimed at him again. A couple civilians were herded out of the room by the cops stuck at the reception desk.

The entire group moved like a well-oiled machine, and Duo wanted to applaud them. Was this what the Preventers would have been like if they'd been given the time to become anything? He could see it; rather easily, actually. With Une as leader, how could they be anything less?

"Truss me up if you want," he said, his smirk most likely making it clear that he would definitely get loose from said restraints. "I just need to find out how you guys are coordinating things so that we don't get in each other's ways."

"And just what do you plan to do?"

Duo turned, a grin already forming on his face. "Sally?" He clapped eyes on her and almost shrieked like a girl. He'd really, really missed this woman. She'd fought like a hellcat until she'd fallen to the radiation. The woman looked the exact same as from his world. He grinned. How many women were absolutely pissed that Sally had some sort of anti-aging magic hidden somewhere on her?

"Do we know each other?"

Duo shook his head, refusing to get upset by the question. No one here knew him, and he only knew them partly. A little bit. Sort of. Well, he knew the them that existed before the five years bit. Did that count?

Ugh, great. Another headache.

"Actually, I don't think we do," he said, ignoring the fact that he'd just said her name. Surely she was still the big bad doctor of Preventers HQ? Even though she'd been that for about a week, so maybe she'd moved into the field? Or something? He let it go for the moment. "I'm gathering up the pilots. It'd be easier if we all worked together on this, right? Unless you want everyone heading to one location and leaving the others vulnerable."

Sally took over for the young blond dude, pushing past even him to stand in front of Duo, hands on her hips, gun still tight in her grip. "And we have evidence of you not being part of this?"

"Can you prove negatives?" he asked, because he recognized her half-sarcastic banter when he heard it. It was her default tone, after all. "Look. If you want to have this conversation here, I can start dropping spoilers. Or you can lead me up to the top floor and we can all discuss this like rational human beings, in secret like we're supposed to."

The woman's lips actually quirked. She looked furious with herself for it. "How about I do you one better? You hand over all your weapons without a fuss – _all_ of them, pretty boy – and I'll let you go up with Agent Gremsky here."

Gremsky, huh? Duo sent the blond a quick grin. "You and me, huh? Sounds like fun."

The man's trigger finger twitched.

Duo laughed. "All right, Sally." And because he knew the woman was not above frisking him naked in public, he took his bone dagger out, then another small switch from his boot. He didn't bring a gun; they weren't allowed on the premises, and he didn't need to be thought of as a terrorist or something before he even got in the damn door. And because he liked her, he even lifted his shirt a bit and spun. "See? Nothing else."

She lifted a brow. "So only about one or two more," she said, and Duo couldn't help the ecstatic grin. She sighed. "You won't take them all off."

"Enemy territory, honey. As far as I know, you guys aren't half as altruistic as you appear."

Another quirk of lips, and another furrow of brow as she caught herself. She pointed to his shirt, and, knowing what she was referencing, he pulled out his necklace, showing that all that sat on it was a cross and three rings. She nodded, and he put it back. "Go," she said, pointing the way to the elevators, and Duo found himself curious about how difficult it would be to leave little Gremsky behind and take the elevators up alone. It would be fun, but he didn't think it would be a good idea to have Gremsky and the other Preventers calling up a red alert before he managed to at least talk to Une.

So he let Gremsky lead him over, let the Preventers part into two factions, one on either side, their guns still trained on him, the cops from the reception desk returning and flanking him, making sure he had to go through at least a couple of them to be able to escape, and he rolled his eyes. "Take care of my babies!" he called to Sally, and heard a small huff, perhaps one of laughter.

"Maybe it's a pilot thing," he heard her mumble, and wanted to jump for joy. She knew one of them? Heero, maybe? His heart jerked, tore a little, and he grimaced as the tearing seemed to turn a little more... literal. At least, he thought, let him make it away from the crowd.

The made it to the elevators, and Duo hit the button for up, something that made the man beside him growl. Agent Gremsky never lowered his gun, and it was starting to look a little ridiculous. Duo was painfully reminded of how Hilde had been before... well, before waiting five years in the military had hardened her. He took another look at Gremsky. "You got a first name? Mine's Duo. Nice to meetcha."

He let himself slip into the old slang, unsurprised when the man responded with, "Shut yer hole."

A rat.

Gremsky seemed to catch himself too little too late, and he stared at Duo with wide eyes. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Duo. Well, that's the name I chose for myself. You have your old one, don't you? People don't usually choose Gremsky as their last name, you know."

The elevator arrived with a ding, and the man actually jerked. Duo reached out and grabbed his gun, lifting it up and nearly pulling it from his grip. His heart pounded up into his throat. "Jesus, kid! Don't fuckin' jerk like that when your hand's on the trigger. You tryin' to get me killed?"

It seemed everything froze, and Duo realized he was still in eyesight of the other Preventers, and he'd just snatched the gun from the Preventer escorting him. Very slowly, he let go. Gremsky didn't know what to do, but slowly, he lowered his gun. "You could've done that at any time."

And now that Duo knew the fundamental background of the man, he recognized that he'd insulted the man. He scratched the top of his head. "Look, man, I don't feel like getting plugged when I just came to help. You know?" He quirked the guy a grin, but really, the headache and chest pain was getting more than a little distracting, and the elevator was about to leave. He hopped on it, and Gremsky, forced to act as babysitter, had to get on, too. Duo punched the top button, because that was where it had been in his dimension, and he didn't think Une's ego could stand to have it moved down or anything. "And yeah, I can grab it from you, but that's because you make it an easy target when you come close. Did you see Sally? She kept it ready to use, but difficult for me to grab. Any attempt to do so would have taken too long, and she would have easily been able to squirm away long enough to shoot me."

Jason tilted his head. So Duo had been right about that, too. Rat confidence, but rat smarts. Never look good advice in the mouth. Take it wherever you can find it, and if learning it doesn't hurt, all the better. Humiliation was a learning tool.

The rat considered this, then put his own hands on his hips – good memory, Duo thought, and grinned. "C'mon, man, I gotta know your name, it's killing me." Seriously. He might very well be dying on this stupid little trip up. If he could just get the guy talking, then he could recede into himself, just for a few seconds.

The man grumbled, but finally, sullenly, as he switched to crossed arms and quickly rejected the stance, he said, "Jason."

"Jason Gremsky, huh? Nice name." It sounded like a movie star's name. The boy wasn't bad looking, either. The naturally blond hair was right up there with Quatre's, just a couple shades darker, shorter than his due to Preventers policy – the reason he'd never joined, actually. He wasn't cutting his hair because of some ridiculous notion of better performance. As if his braid was screwing him up. Heck, even Wufei had a freakin' ponytail. And how come, Duo thought, his thoughts fracturing as the pain finally got to be too much, Wufei could keep his ponytail, but Duo couldn't keep his braid? Was it the bangs? The length? Or maybe Wufei's signing contract had included 'don't mess with the do.'

Then the claws tore into his lungs and Duo sagged against the wall. Jason looked over at him, dropping out of his boxing stance. "You okay?"

Duo tried to wave him off and barely managed to keep his balance. His head swam and pounded all at once, and he just sat down on the floor of the elevator as the damn thing dinged. Figured.

But then Jason surprised him, closing the doors and putting them in emergency stop. The man hovered beside Duo. "You sick?" he asked, and there was suddenly a lot more empathy in the man's countenance.

Duo grinned. "Dying, actually," he said, not afraid to admit it to someone who would think the same way he did – dying. Got to make his death count. Have to help the pack.

The man nodded. "How long you need?"

Rat ideals, rat speech. Duo wondered how long the man had been off the streets, how long he'd been in Preventers. If he'd joined the military. It was somehow relaxing, refreshing, to be speaking with someone he knew nothing about. He had no expectations to lose, or old memories to battle with. Just him, meeting someone new, both of them learning about one another for the first time. It was odd just how odd it felt. "Just... a bit." Because he didn't know how long, and he didn't think he had any more air to use to speak.

Jason nodded. "I guessed something might be wrong with you," the man confided, "seeing as you used the mute buttons instead of just speaking the floor number."

Duo used the last of his air to wheeze out a laugh. Of course the damn elevator was voice-activated. Stupid new technology.

Duo didn't bother correcting the man, because after all, it all basically boiled down to what he was saying, and it certainly wasn't Duo's prerogative to tell all and sundry that he was actually from another dimension and, hey, would anyone want to pick apart his brain? Stick him in a lab somewhere and watch his slow degeneration? No, thank you.

It wasn't as bad as it had been in the embassy, and for that he was glad. Just when his vision started popping out in spots, he sucked in a deep breath. It started off a racket of pain all up and down his joints, and he thought his tendons seemed to be snapping and his bones rubbing together, and his organs all shrank and squirmed, almost feeling punctured, and then it all faded like a dream.

He waited a few more moments, just to make sure he didn't faceplant the moment he tried to regain his feet. Then, when he did stand, he found he needed to hold on to the stupid banister, the one he'd once made fun of, because his knees felt weak. Damn. He hoped it would wait long enough for him to find the others. Maybe Sally knew where they were. He would have to ask her before he left. Une, too.

Jason didn't say anything, and for that, Duo was grateful. Preventers had picked up a great man in this one. Duo grinned tiredly down at the blond. "Lead the way," he said, and they both ignored how thready the words had been.

Duo had only gotten a vague look around the first floor, seeing as he'd been surrounded by guns, but this floor didn't seem much different, save the lack of personnel. There were still _people_, of course, but they seemed like secretarial types instead of Preventers – possibly misleading, he thought, seeing one of the women toting a hidden pistol – but they were carrying papers and folders and phones, each of them sidestepping each other with practiced ease. While each and every one of them watched Duo as he passed them, all of them had the 'too busy to deal with it' look, as if daring Duo to try to start a conversation with them. If he'd been feeling less deathbed-sick, he'd have messed with them. As it was, he followed the line of beige carpeting to its inevitable end at the opposite side of the elevators, because the woman had her own private elevator, and everyone else must wade through the shit to get the honor of sitting in front of her.

But when Jason finally stopped him in front of Une's office and opened the thick door, Duo stopped. "_Noin?_" He turned around and read the stupid plaque on the door. No, it certainly did say 'Commander Une.' So had there been some sort of body switch in this dimension?

"So you do know who we are."

Duo turned back around. Noin was leaning back in Une's seat, hands steepled, and Duo was amazed the Lady didn't have any alarms on the thing to let her know someone was sitting in her seat. "Are you actually the..." His thoughts trailed off as he tried to consider how Une would ever let anyone else lead her baby. He couldn't see it. It didn't make any sense. Even Noin. "Hell, I thought you didn't want to even be an active agent?" Then he thought again. That had been _his_ Noin, _his_ Une. Maybe they were different here? "Or not?" he tried.

The woman tapped her fingers together. "Or not," she agreed. She waved him in. "You seem to have some information on us, but I'm afraid we have little on you. A young man named 'Duo.' You say you were a Gundam pilot. That would have meant you were just a child during the war."

"An annoying yet astute observation," he said, splaying out in one of her chairs. "So, where's Une? Unless you've recently come into acquisition of the Preventers. In which case, congratulations. I do not envy you."

Unlike Sally, Noin had perfect control of her lips. She pulled them into a frown. "You are not one of the pilots."

"Yes, I am. Although, technically, no, I'm not, either. I'll explain in more detail later, but for right now, I think we should discuss that which is actually going to be important in the next few hours." He waved his hand. "You know, the whole Osiris Sloan thing."

Noin's glance flickered back to Jason, then back to Duo. "It seems more to me that you've come here for information of your own. You have nothing to give us." She waved Jason over. "Please escort this man down to our jail cells."

Duo sighed. "Noin, really? You and I both know that even the Preventers can't handle attacks in several places at once. Especially if those attacks include mobile suits. If we work together–"

"It's a bit too late to try alliance talks," she said. "The attacks have already begun."

Duo stilled. Already? That meant that far off place, wherever it was, was already being targeted. Did Quatre know? The other him? The Maguanacs? Duo stood. "So let me get in touch with my friends. We'll help. Don't give me that damn look!" Shit, he should have known! The Preventers had been a little _too_ prepared for an invasion, and the men and women just outside these doors had far too many responsibilities for there to be anything other than a state of emergency. Shit, shit, shit. "The enemy has mobile suits. You have no more than one or two of us pilots, right? Which means that if Osiris sends his suits out to more than one or two places, you guys and the civilians are all fucked. Right? And you're going to lock me up simply because you don't know if you can trust me? That's not acceptable. How many people are supposed to die before you realize you should've taken a fuckin' chance?"

Noin's lips pulled even further, until she looked like she was trying to form some sort of jowl. Duo heard a movement behind him and wondered just how Jason was taking Duo standing up to his technical rat leader. The man's loyalties would be to her first, no matter how easily the two of them had clicked.

"Listen to him, woman."

Duo froze all over again. How many times had he been surprised that day? It couldn't be good for his heart, even if the thing had been perfectly serviceable after his trip through dimensions. He turned. Amazingly, the man hadn't changed much in the five-plus years he'd aged. His lines were more defined, interestingly enough making him look almost girly, save for that severe hair style. "Wufei?"

The man cocked his head. His eyes narrowed on Duo as he leaned against the door jamb. "I do not believe we've met."


End file.
